Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

randomascii.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 320 posts

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#151

Post by bcaa7f3a8bbc »

Animats wrote: post #135

So why are we in this mess? Because there are still buffer overflows. Address space randomization is done because buffer overflows allow exploits. But rather than fixing the underlying problem, we now have complex schemes to spread programs over the entire 64 bit address space to make such exploits unreliable. Then, apparently Microsoft's Javascript JIT engine has enough problems with buffer overflows that each compi…

Because the underlying problem cannot be solved, until all the programs and systems currently in use can be completely rewritten and reimplemented with a widely-accepted programming language and methodology to ensure correctness and security.

If the current approach from the C+Unix era to programming and OS is still in use, there are only three solutions available...

1. Fix-and-miss all the bugs, safe programming practice.

2. Isolation

3. Mitigation

Isolation is useful to limit the scope of a security breach but cannot stop attackers from exploiting the bugs. The only solution which is able to stop attackers from exploiting existing programs is mitigation - you don't fix and miss individual bugs, bugs are always there, what we need stop attackers from exploiting them. Some exploits are easy to stop, hence NX. Others can only be stopped in a probabilistic way, hence ASLR.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#152

Post by dasmoth »

speedplane wrote: post #113
tomc1985 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't BeOS get this right? I too wonder why UI threads are still so obnoxiously tied to... everything else. Put UI in the fast lane! (At least until some bug tries to make a bajillion calls a second) Then I remembered how much more complicated it is to write proper multithreaded GUI code :P

I remember old Mac OS 9. If you started a print job, and held down the mouse holding down a click, the printer would just stop. The entire system wasn't properly multi-threaded.

That’s something that I remember people in my circle joking about at the time, but in retrospect maybe the joke was on us. User input should always be absolute top priority, and if that means something else has to stop then so be it.

(Although with 24 cores...)

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#153

Post by fipple »

speedplane wrote: post #108
thoughtfunction wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all UI programing is single threaded. If the main thread is blocked for more than 10-16ms, then frames start dropping and the UI is unresponsive for that time. Add locks and you add many more causes for the main thread to be blocked beyond pure computation.

Not just UI programming, almost all programming is single threaded. What programmer wants to deal with threads, really? They only do because they need to get more performance out of a chip. And that leads us to the real problem. Chips are not advancing at the rate they should. Additional performance gains come from adding multiple chips to the same die, not making the chips faster. This forces programmers to think ab…

> Chips are not advancing at the rate they should.

A weird interpretation of a singular event in the history of technology. No wheel maker complained because wood wasn’t getting twice as strong every 18 months.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#154

Post by some_account »

I'm running Manjaro Linux with Deepin Desktop on a Dual core 0.9Ghz CPU with 8 GB of memory.

Boot speed from off to login is less than 5 seconds. From hibernate it's instant.

My girlfriend brought similar desktop to work and people with windows couldn't believe the machine was that fast. It runs circles around their new windows laptops with tons of memory and cpu cores.

Firefox loads in a second. Kingsoft office also loads in less than a second.

I think it's time people start to understand what is out there now as options for their laptops. And in particular, deepin desktop is very fast and beautiful.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#155

Post by roel_v »

yason wrote: post #35

Interesting story in particular, but in general, performance and memory behave like any other resource that is plentiful: they get used up until things are slowish again. Like road space. Things get added on top of each other until the reduction in speed becomes visible. Because these days, unlike in the 90's, it's no help waiting for the next Pentium processor to come out this usually results in a heavy optimisation…

I think the dynamic was more that that software was slow when it was written, but had a long shelf life, so after a hardware upgrade or two it seemed very fast. I remember using Norton Commander (in DOS) on an 8086 and it was laggy scrolling a directory with 50 files.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#156

Post by sadamznintern »

some_account wrote: post #154

I'm running Manjaro Linux with Deepin Desktop on a Dual core 0.9Ghz CPU with 8 GB of memory. Boot speed from off to login is less than 5 seconds. From hibernate it's instant. My girlfriend brought similar desktop to work and people with windows couldn't believe the machine was that fast. It runs circles around their new windows laptops with tons of memory and cpu cores. Firefox loads in a second. Kingsoft office also…

.9ghz in 2018!? What machine is this?

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#157

Post by EdiX »

x3sphere wrote: post #101
bartread wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't meant to be an especially religious comment, but I regularly switch back and forth between OSX and Windows 10 and wanted to make mention of the differences. I also use Ubuntu fairly regularly but only over ssh so I'll discount it from this comparison. Both OSX and Windows 10 do suffer from UI lag but, in my experience, it is far worse on Windows 10 to the point where I have come to absolutely detest Window…

Ubuntu w/Gnome is possibly the worst offender. I actually like Gnome a lot but anytime I leave my PC on for more than a day the UI gets incredibly sluggish. Just moving windows around gets choppy and there is a annoying pause whenever I click the application launcher (happens even without the animation). I've also found macOS provides the smoothest experience. I haven't found W10 that bad, but I haven't used it that…

You should try cinnamon. There's no accounting for taste, but after using gnome 3 for three years I tried cinnamon (version 3.6, older versions weren't good) and I found it better across the board.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#158

Post by oblio »

speedplane wrote: post #108
thoughtfunction wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all UI programing is single threaded. If the main thread is blocked for more than 10-16ms, then frames start dropping and the UI is unresponsive for that time. Add locks and you add many more causes for the main thread to be blocked beyond pure computation.

Not just UI programming, almost all programming is single threaded. What programmer wants to deal with threads, really? They only do because they need to get more performance out of a chip. And that leads us to the real problem. Chips are not advancing at the rate they should. Additional performance gains come from adding multiple chips to the same die, not making the chips faster. This forces programmers to think ab…

We need multi-threading to be super simple but for that we need mass adoption of new programming tools and techniques (and the corresponding mass-abandoning of old ones).

But good luck with that! You're fighting against the most powerful force in the universe: economics (more specifically sunk cost into existing investments). "Soft"ware is a lot "harder" once economics are taken into account.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#159

Post by johnchristopher »

some_account wrote: post #154

I'm running Manjaro Linux with Deepin Desktop on a Dual core 0.9Ghz CPU with 8 GB of memory. Boot speed from off to login is less than 5 seconds. From hibernate it's instant. My girlfriend brought similar desktop to work and people with windows couldn't believe the machine was that fast. It runs circles around their new windows laptops with tons of memory and cpu cores. Firefox loads in a second. Kingsoft office also…

It has nothing to do with Linux though. This morning my ubuntu 18.04.1 running kde took 2 minutes to boot and then 3 minutes and a half to load the desktop. Then it'd hang on the menu when typing/searching for an application, I'd wait for the menu to disappear and then it'd work. shrug

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#160

Post by [deleted] »

some_account wrote: post #154

I'm running Manjaro Linux with Deepin Desktop on a Dual core 0.9Ghz CPU with 8 GB of memory. Boot speed from off to login is less than 5 seconds. From hibernate it's instant. My girlfriend brought similar desktop to work and people with windows couldn't believe the machine was that fast. It runs circles around their new windows laptops with tons of memory and cpu cores. Firefox loads in a second. Kingsoft office also…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN