Re: [TUHS] PDP-11 legacy, C, and modern architectures

[Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 04:32:59PM +0100, tfb@tfeb.org wrote:
> On 28 Jun 2018, at 18:09, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I'm not sure how people keep missing the original point.  Which was:
> > the market won't choose a bunch of wimpy cpus when it can get faster
> > ones.  It wasn't about the physics (which I'm not arguing with), it 
> > was about a choice between lots of wimpy cpus and a smaller number of
> > fast cpus.  The market wants the latter, as Ted said, Sun bet heavily
> > on the former and is no more.
> 
> [I said I wouldn't reply more: I'm weak.]
> 
> I think we have been talking at cross-purposes, which is probably
> my fault.  I think you've been using 'wimpy' to mean 'intentionally
> slower than they could be' while I have been using it to mean 'of very
> tiny computational power compared to the power of the whole system'.
> Your usage is probably more correct in terms of the way the term has
> been used historically.

Not "intentionally" as "let me slow this down" but as in "it's faster 
and cheaper to make a slower cpu so I'll just give you more of them".

The market has shown, repeatedly, that more slow cpus are not as fun
as less faster cpus.  

It's not a hard concept and I struggle to understand why it's a point
to discuss.

> But I think my usage tells you something important: that the performance
> of individual cores will, inevitably, become increasingly tiny compared
> to the performance of the system they are in ....

Yeah, so what?  That wasn't the point being discussed though you and Perry
keep pushing it.