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24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

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Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#131
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

Makes me wonder about a distributed compilation. If everyone had a monster workstation but not everyone compiles at the same time, a theoretical networked compiler (which may already exist as I haven't really checked) could spread the files out among available workstations and bring things back together near the end.

As the largest issue is the throwing away of duplicate work, I'd see it as a kind of reverse binary tree: machines working on files that depend on others talk together, then when finished send the condensed work up the chain (and signal their availability for the next workload chunk or phase) until everything collapses down back to the original machine.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#132
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

> Damn, are we doing this wrong? Yes, and I mean "we" as in "this industry". I just recently talked to someone whose Swift framework(s) were compiling at roughly 16 lines per second. Spurred on by Jonathan Blow's musings on compile times for Jai[1], I started tinkering with tcc a little. It compiled a generated 200KLOC file (lots of small functions) in around 200 ms. Then there are Smalltalk and Lisp systems that are…

Bjarne's made the mistake of having C++ rely on C's linker model, so it meant no modules.

Now we can see it as a big mistake, but on those days probably it was one of the reasons why C++'s adoption took off.

Also while C lacked modules, most Algol and PL/I derived languages supported them since the late 60's.

Swift's case has the issue of mixing type inference with subtyping, so lots of time is spent there.

All in all, I really miss TP compile times and at least on Java/.NET, even with AOT compilers are close enough.

EDIT: some typos

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#133
post #28

So what now ? Should/does the author wait getting some traction on Hacker News and hopefully be noticed by dev at Microsoft, or is there some way to provide Microsoft directly these data, skipping Tier-1 support ? The author seem to be working at Google, so he might get some leverage from that, but what about Random Joe ? Keep enjoying the bug "forever", I guess ?

There are many many MS bugs that last for years. Pretty much any time you search for a bug in MS software you will find someone in a support forum giving generic advice (known issue that we will work on, not a bug, please reinstall Windows and applications) and users complaining. Typical example: https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-... basic problem that has been there many many years. For thi…

>The only real long-term solution is supporting competitive products.

Not really viable when the only OS that has software parity is OS X and the only OS with hardware parity is Linux.

If we drew a venn diagram it would be a straight line of circles with windows sitting in the middle. To switch away you have to make a choice between less software or less processing/GPU power.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#134
post #57

He's also written some stuff regarding Visual Studio perf. https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/self-inflicted-... Close to my heart as I use Visual Studio all day. Horrid piece of software. I'll probably get downvoted for this.

I live in two worlds at the moment - supporting and maintaining a large PHP application (for which I use phpStorm) and developing .NET applications (for which I, obviously, use VS). I've been a VS user for nigh-on 10 years now and always found the experience really fantastic. I think it's certainly more coherent that the IntelliJ-based IDEs (which, to be fair, are also very good). Anyway, I'm genuinely surprised to s…

"what specifically do you dislike about it?"

It's not the tooling I dislike it's the performance. No matter what I throw at it I still get the same experience. It feels like 95% of everything it does is blocking the UI.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#135
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the C++ version of "you're holding it wrong"?

it's the c++ version of "why are you still using c++?"

On my case, because sometimes Java or .NET still need a little help from it.

Ideally with Java 10 or C# 8 planned features, it won't be any longer the case, but until then we have quite a few years.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#136
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

Makes me wonder about a distributed compilation. If everyone had a monster workstation but not everyone compiles at the same time, a theoretical networked compiler (which may already exist as I haven't really checked) could spread the files out among available workstations and bring things back together near the end. As the largest issue is the throwing away of duplicate work, I'd see it as a kind of reverse binary t…

Isn't this what IncrediBuild does on Windows?

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#137

The terrifying result of having ABI compatibility with the first commercially successful system of its kind from the '80s. Granted, they aren't doing themselves any favours with their new straight-jacket style application ABI.

64-bit versions of Windows 10 (and 8/7 maybe?) are no longer compatible with 16-bit code.

Yep, no 64-bit Windows has 16-bit compatibility.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#138
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

These numbers don't seem abnormal; I recall building Safari many years ago, and having multi-GB of intermediate products shrink down to a 30MB executable (plus a few hundred MB of debug symbol). So, I have a thought: if we're spending all this time to compile functions (particularly template functions) that are just thrown away later, why are we performing all our optimization passes up-front? Surely, optimization pa…

> These numbers don't seem abnormal;

Hmm...not "abnormal" in the sense that we've gotten used to it: yes. Heck, last I heard building OneNote for Mac takes about half a day on a powerful MacPro.

But I'd say definitely abnormal in terms of how things should be.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? What good is an operating system on a multi-core device that allows anything to get that close to the performance envelope? This is a fine example of competition driving change for change's sake rather than real innovation and everything ending up worse as a result. I like new features as much as the next person, but not when they compromise core functionality. Not being able to type is inexcusable .

I agree. However at this point, I don't see anything an OS can do to help. I see plenty of typing slowdowns every other day now. But I'm not sure just how many of them are the OS's fault. When your typing seems to lag, there are two places that can be slowing it down - the input side (reacting to hardware events) and the output side (drawing and updating the UI). I suppose keyboard buffers are pretty well isolated, a…

Intellij still freezes while indexing on my work desktop which has 8 cores and 16 threads, at least they finally allowed pause/resume for that so that's a win.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#140
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Linux for my daily work for more than ten years now and develop for MacOS since around 2000, and I honestly cannot confirm this. If you have a fast and well-tuned machine, the sluggishness of modern applications might not be so notable, but it surely is there, and then there are also many usability issues of desktop software on Linux. Not to speak of browser-based applications, which mostly have unusable us…

The nice thing about GNU/Linux is that the you can almost completely avoid all of the "desktop applications." I only ever start X when I need Firefox or mupdf. Everything else is a nice lightweight TTY app that I run in tmux. My 1.3 GHz celleron netbook is incredibly responsive set up this way.

Similar but with XFCE, it rarely feels sluggish and I nearly always know why.
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