From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.1 (2015-04-28) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.1 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id f1dec172 for ; Thu, 28 Jun 2018 16:02:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 0CABAA1856; Fri, 29 Jun 2018 02:02:15 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8E5F0A1816; Fri, 29 Jun 2018 02:02:04 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id D7715A1816; Fri, 29 Jun 2018 02:02:02 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 801179EDF1 for ; Fri, 29 Jun 2018 02:02:02 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 1172035E12C; Thu, 28 Jun 2018 09:02:02 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2018 09:02:02 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: Tim Bradshaw Message-ID: <20180628160202.GF21688@mcvoy.com> References: <81277CC3-3C4A-49B8-8720-CFAD22BB28F8@bitblocks.com> <20180628141538.GB663@thunk.org> <20180628144017.GB21688@mcvoy.com> <20180628105538.65f82615@jabberwock.cb.piermont.com> <20180628145825.GE21688@mcvoy.com> <2B710879-7659-47A4-AA86-03F232F7B78B@tfeb.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <2B710879-7659-47A4-AA86-03F232F7B78B@tfeb.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] PDP-11 legacy, C, and modern architectures X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 04:39:58PM +0100, Tim Bradshaw wrote: > > On 28 Jun 2018, at 15:58, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > You completely missed my point, I never said I was in favor of single > > cpu systems, I said I the speed of a single cpu to be fast no matter > > how many of them I get. The opposite of wimpy. > > And this also misses the point, I think. Defining a core as 'wimpy' > or not is dependent on when you make the definition: the Cray-1 was not > wimpy when it was built, but it is now. That's not what I, or Ted, or the Market was saying. We were not comparing yesterday's cpu against todays. We were saying that at any given moment, a faster processor is better than more processors that are slower. That's not an absolute, obviously. If I am running AWS and I get 10x the total CPU processing speed at the same power budget, yeah, that's interesting. But for people who care about performance, and there are a lot of them, more but slower is less desirable than less but faster. There too much stuff that hasn't been (or can't be) parallelized (and I'll note here that I'm the guy that built the first clustered server at Sun, I can argue the parallel case just fine). People still care about performance and always will. Yeah, for your laptop or whatever you could probably use what you have for the next 10 years and be fine. But when you are doing real work, sorting the genome, machine learning, whatever, performance is a thing and lots of wimpy cpus are not.