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The Jason Bourne Aesthetic

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Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic

#131

Post by ddingus »

Detrus wrote: post #117
ddingus wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that actually true? We've hit a plateau on overall compute speed. There are incremental improvements, but the difference in performance over 5 years today is much less than it was 7-10 years ago. My 10 year old laptop is awesome, and it's a Thinkpad too. I have fixed it, replacing a fan, upgrading RAM, etc... all good, but it's performance isn't so hot. Buying new made a lot of sense. But, my current 4-5 year old,…

Apple is still selling the old model user upgradable MacBook Pro for $1100 http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro the same price I bought one for in 2011. Except I bought refurbished and smaller HD. Some of the new machines Apple is selling for $1000 are actually slower at many tasks. But the market has spoken and Apple is selling hardware that suits most user's narrow tasks of email, browsing and video. It al…

Indeed. Custom hardware can move us forward, and that's an interesting trend that may actually drive me to buy new machines sooner.

One of my daily driver tasks is CAD. Mechanical CAD. Due to the age and massive human investment in geometry kernels, single thread performance really matters. It is difficult to apply multi core processing to CAD problems.

It would be interesting to understand what special hardware could improve on this.

Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic

#132

Post by bronson »

detaro wrote: post #23
bronson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But CPU spring connectors don't last forever. If you want to ensure the CPU stays reliable for a good long time (at today's clock rates), you're going to have to solder it down.

source for that claim? Never heard of that, and outside of laptops or SFF boards it's really unusual to solder CPUs in.

Just google, there's massive amounts of industry data. One term is "insertion cycle", another is "loss of force". A typical soldered PCB connection will always last longer than a comparable mechanical one. (comparing cheap to cheap and exotic to exotic, so no fair comparing a corroded solder joint in a throwaway greeting card to the backplanes in an FA/18).

I don't know of a good overview but here's a specific example: http://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/Molexlga2011brochure-3.pdf

The term "Mechanical Durability (min.): 30 cycles" means that this socket is only guaranteed for 30 insertion/removal cycles and they don't specify a lifetime. Is that lower than you were expecting? Making connectors is hard!

Amusing that my comment is factual and at -1.

Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic

#133

Post by bronson »

JohnBooty wrote: post #41
bronson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But CPU spring connectors don't last forever. If you want to ensure the CPU stays reliable for a good long time (at today's clock rates), you're going to have to solder it down.

While CPU performance has increased by an order of magnitude, "today's clock rates" aren't any faster than the clock rates we had 10 years ago.

True. I just meant clock rates faster than 50MHz or so, so you need tiny pin/ball arrays instead of something huge and overengineered.

Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic

#134

Post by bronson »

jacquesm wrote: post #37
detaro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

source for that claim? Never heard of that, and outside of laptops or SFF boards it's really unusual to solder CPUs in.

Contacts are a source of trouble, especially in devices that are subjected to vibration. That's why they're sometimes soldered down. For stationary devices this is much less of a concern, the long term killer there is contact oxidization. Since CPU contacts are made of gold this is not usually a source of concern. Even circuit boards made in the 70's with regular sockets still function fine today, the 'bad' parts are…

I got a great score on an exotic DMM from the 80s where the only problem was a weak ROM socket. Machine pin sockets might be OK (if you're always inserting a brand new IC) but dual wipe definitely wears out.

Gold plating only works for expensive parts, and only if you have the same plating on both parts. The 10u gold alloys on flashy audio equipment looks great but they aren't likely to be any more reliable than tin. A gold socket can't save a tin balled CPU: http://www.te.com/documentation/whitepapers/pdf/p316-90.pdf

Re: The Jason Bourne Aesthetic

#135

Post by inklesspen »

fit2rule wrote: post #122
Vexs wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That story just makes me sad. Like, from the bottom of my soul and my hacker's heart kinda sad.

Don't be sad about it, there are plenty of Charlie's. I knew a Charlie in Hollywood, CA. He was an old cranky Asian-American guy, greying beard, real guru stereotype, had a big store full of hi-fi and guitar and studio equipment. Every studio engineer in SoCal knew that if they needed something fixed, fast, no questions asked, you took your synth/guitar/studio equipment to him. He looked at you, told you exactly how…

Any tips on how to find a Charlie? (I'm in NYC right now, say.)
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