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Forget your grandmother. There are loads of hobbyists out there doing high quality video, audio and software development work on boxes that are 5+ years old, qu

Forget your grandmother. There are loads of hobbyists out there doing high quality video, audio and software development work on boxes that are 5+ years old, quite happily. The set of things for which you need a superfast machine is really very small (compared to the whole,) especially if you are happy working within the limitations of the tools you have to hand, which covers a huge quantity of creative people, and most of the really good ones.

yareally 14y ago
One reason to need a fast CPU and lots of RAM is building Android from the source (primarily within the Android modding/hacking community). I mostly point it out because it has a wider appeal than most other large projects that are built from the source by typical users regularly these days and also for its demanding build requirements. Rebuilding the entire source can be lengthy without a fairly new CPU, SSD and lots of RAM. Granted one does not have to rebuild the entire source most of the time, but rebuilding some parts like the framework base (the java userland area libraries), takes a while. Following specs came from Google[1] the other year when ICS was released: -6GB of download. -25GB disk space to do a single build. -80GB disk space to build all AOSP configs at the same time. -16GB RAM recommended, more preferred, anything less will measurably benefit from using an SSD. -5+ hours of CPU time for a single build, 25+ minutes of wall time, as measured on my workstation (dual-E5620 i.e. 2x quad-core 2.4GHz HT, with 24GB of RAM, no SSD). Lots of RAM allows you to switch the compile output over to a ramdrive (or if not, move it to a separate SSD if you have two). Moving the entire source to a ram drive or fast ssd also makes editing much faster (especially the initial load into an IDE like Intellij or Eclipse) or grepping through the codebase. Doing it on anything less becomes somewhat tedious from my experience. [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!topic/android-building/N1exifTpPfA https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!topi...
- tsunamifury 14y ago
  I don't understand why anyone would do this locally when you can compile on an elastic cloud instance at many times the speed for pennies. Why keep upgrading your hardware when you should just be submitting these jobs to an ultra-cheap server that will be many times faster anyways?
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    It might be cheaper in the long run to have it locally if you do it a lot. At current pricing tying up that much EC2 (about equiv to an XL instance) for 5 hours is going to be measured in $ rather than pennies.
    - yareally 14y ago
      You're totally right. Compiles for aosp add up quick when testing or building for multiple devices. Even cyanogenmod's (the largest group) nightly automated builds are done on bare metal servers.

yareally 14y ago

One reason to need a fast CPU and lots of RAM is building Android from the source (primarily within the Android modding/hacking community). I mostly point it out because it has a wider appeal than most other large projects that are built from the source by typical users regularly these days and also for its demanding build requirements. Rebuilding the entire source can be lengthy without a fairly new CPU, SSD and lots of RAM. Granted one does not have to rebuild the entire source most of the time, but rebuilding some parts like the framework base (the java userland area libraries), takes a while. Following specs came from Google[1] the other year when ICS was released: -6GB of download. -25GB disk space to do a single build. -80GB disk space to build all AOSP configs at the same time. -16GB RAM recommended, more preferred, anything less will measurably benefit from using an SSD. -5+ hours of CPU time for a single build, 25+ minutes of wall time, as measured on my workstation (dual-E5620 i.e. 2x quad-core 2.4GHz HT, with 24GB of RAM, no SSD). Lots of RAM allows you to switch the compile output over to a ramdrive (or if not, move it to a separate SSD if you have two). Moving the entire source to a ram drive or fast ssd also makes editing much faster (especially the initial load into an IDE like Intellij or Eclipse) or grepping through the codebase. Doing it on anything less becomes somewhat tedious from my experience. [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!topic/android-building/N1exifTpPfA https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!topi...

tsunamifury 14y ago
I don't understand why anyone would do this locally when you can compile on an elastic cloud instance at many times the speed for pennies. Why keep upgrading your hardware when you should just be submitting these jobs to an ultra-cheap server that will be many times faster anyways?
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  It might be cheaper in the long run to have it locally if you do it a lot. At current pricing tying up that much EC2 (about equiv to an XL instance) for 5 hours is going to be measured in $ rather than pennies.
  - yareally 14y ago
    You're totally right. Compiles for aosp add up quick when testing or building for multiple devices. Even cyanogenmod's (the largest group) nightly automated builds are done on bare metal servers.