24-core CPU and I can’t type an email – part two • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by maltalex » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #28

bluejekyll wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use VSCode (electron based) on a flight cross country regularly. I generally have enough power for the flight (4-5 hours), without much problem. The memory usage hasn’t been bad enough for me to notice it stealing resources from other apps that need it. I don’t think most users notice. I’m not talking about you. It’s clear this is a big deal to you, and so I assume you don’t use any electron apps. I think that’s a…

Visual Studio Code = real work with a complicated set of features. I expect it to consume a fair amount of memory and battery life. Slack - Shouldn’t.

What makes VSCode more “real” in your opinion?

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

#32

Post by gpderetta » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:25 PM UTC

AstralStorm wrote: post #6

snaky wrote: post #5

> the lock was being acquired and released ~49,000 times and was held for, on average, less than one ms at a time. But for some reason, even though the lock was released 49,000 times the Chrome process was never able to acquire it. Well, locking is hard. > The good news is that even though there is occasional unfairness, there is unlikely to be persistent unfairness. In order for a thread to steal the lock, it needs…

Actually this is exactly because someone in Windows used the plain old mutex. I'd call that "your granddad's lock". It's old, crotchety, unfair and shouldn't be used in situations where any concurrency can be expected. This despite the kernel having a nice RCU mechanism inside as well as waitfree queues.

I guess:

s/concurrency/contention/

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

#33

Post by posixplz » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:29 PM UTC

coldcode wrote: post #24

My MBP only has 8 cores but often times during the day it locks up and blows up a hurricane of fan noise. Why? Idiotic Jamf management software and a virus checker that never finds anything. Some days you only get 1 core for work when it gets stuck and have to reboot to get it back. It's not always the computer, OS or the software you use.

Yep, Jamf and McAfee are both trash-quality software that significantly reduce the overall security of a system. McAfee is a well-known story: their AV unpacks and analyses potential malware via a kernel module. Wtf?

Jamf's code quality and security model are abysmal. It blows my mind that apple recommends the use of Jamf to large Mac shops. Having peeked under the hood at previous employers, I was extremely disappointed. The product is insecure by design - not what one wants for device management that's given root privileges on machines containing corporate crown jewels. I highly doubt their operational paradigm for Jamf cloud has changed in the last year, either.

I apologize for going completely off-topic, but these products make my blood boil. Especially because I now work for a shop that uses both Jamf and McAfee for Mac "security". On a positive note, I removed the corporate mandated malware with ease - no boot to single-user required.

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

#34

Post by bluejekyll » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:33 PM UTC

boomlinde wrote: post #30

bluejekyll wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron gets a lot of hate, but I think people generally are looking at the wrong thing when focusing on memory usage, ask yourself why it’s so important to so many organizations. The number one cost at most companies, is humans. Before electron what did you have for cross platform development? Java was there, but that never really took off for embedded UI inside the browser, and the browser became the primary targe…

"Looking at the wrong thing" is a matter of perspective. As a user, I couldn't care less that you saved money by writing a bloated web app. I care about the resources I have, which includes my own time, energy, money, computer, battery etc. In those terms, there are clear disadvantages to Electron based software.

See my response to a similar sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17826915

My basic point there being that losing a small number of users due to these concerns is probably worth it.

I don't want to come across as someone who's hyper-defensive of Electron. I hate the fact that such a bloated piece of software has become the standard means for supporting cross-platform development. At the same time, I really don't see other viable options at this point in time.

I'm curious though, is there something you would recommend instead that meets these requirements with a single codebase (~90% shared code): target all major platforms (macOS, Windows, Linux) and target all major browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, IE), (edit: and how could I forget, all major phone browsers) with nearly identical UI/UX?

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

#35

Post by sorenjan » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

bluejekyll wrote: post #22

JensRex wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead we get Electron, and people use it to make text editors that take up 500 MB of space.

Electron gets a lot of hate, but I think people generally are looking at the wrong thing when focusing on memory usage, ask yourself why it’s so important to so many organizations. The number one cost at most companies, is humans. Before electron what did you have for cross platform development? Java was there, but that never really took off for embedded UI inside the browser, and the browser became the primary targe…

Yes, ever since computers became "fast enough" developers have traded user's efficiency for their own. It's faster to write, but slower to run. The difference is that it's written once but run thousands or millions of times each day. It's distributed waste of resources, and it adds up.

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

#36

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #26

bluejekyll wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron gets a lot of hate, but I think people generally are looking at the wrong thing when focusing on memory usage, ask yourself why it’s so important to so many organizations. The number one cost at most companies, is humans. Before electron what did you have for cross platform development? Java was there, but that never really took off for embedded UI inside the browser, and the browser became the primary targe…

Electron allows small teams to focus their most costly investment on developing toward one product being developed across many platforms. At the cost of battery life and memory usage for the users....

Electron started as an experiment that took off with quite a bang, and all told it's still pretty new. I think there's a lot of efficiency work to be had, but it's stunning how easy it makes building GUIs.

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

#37

Post by nextos » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

bluejekyll wrote: post #21

Scarblac wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New from Intel: the Scrum processor.

You joke, but seriously, this is generally a goal of distributed and/or parallel computing. Reduce interdependencies, stop constant cross chatter and try to do as much computing in isolation as possible. Scrum’s not necessarily a bad anology. Here’s a different thought that this conversation has me now thinking about, what if we did think about development teams as CPU cores? We might discover weak points in the arch…

Why not just embracing simplicity?

I have a golden rule for my systems. After booting into X and opening one terminal with htop and hiding kernel threads, everything should fit very comfortably in one screen. This constraint forces yourself to have a very simple setup. A few daemons, a window manager and a terminal. I do the rest of my computing in Emacs and Firefox.

I have several Arch or NixOS setups that could work on a 128 MB RAM setup, excluding Firefox. Plus, if something breaks, I know how to fix it.

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

#38

Post by ubermonkey » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

It's tangential here, but, seriously, let me ask:

For those of us here with > 15 years in the business, when's the last time you really felt a BIG uptick in performance or responsiveness from a new computer upgrade?

I buy a new laptop every 3-4 years, and I buy a nice one, but generally speaking I feel like we've been kind of flat in terms of usable power for a while. 6 or 8 years ago I switched to an SSD, and THAT was a big deal -- easily the most dramatic uptick in performance since I moved from an AT clone to a 386 in 1991. But since then? Not so much.

My laptop is smaller. It runs longer on the battery, and is generally cooler. The screen is better. But in terms of how long it takes to boot, or open large data sets, or whatever? Not so much different than 5 years ago.

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

#39

Post by at-fates-hands » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

JensRex wrote: post #17

lmilcin wrote: post #10

I have on my desk a machine that would be an equivalent of a large datacenter two decades ago and then sometimes it is barely able to keep up with me pressing keys on the keyboard. I think the next major step will be for the humanity to learn make software more efficient and effective rather than throw more CPU cycles at the problem.

Instead we get Electron, and people use it to make text editors that take up 500 MB of space.

Compared to some of the Adobe products I have to use, 500MB would be a dream.

There was a time when I couldn't have two Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator open at the same time. They would just continue to hoard resources until my machine locked up and I had to reboot.

Even today I have a fairly robust system (i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 3GB Video card) and running multiple programs still makes all my fans kick in and start whining at me.

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

#40

Post by stefanfisk » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

ubermonkey wrote: post #38

It's tangential here, but, seriously, let me ask: For those of us here with > 15 years in the business, when's the last time you really felt a BIG uptick in performance or responsiveness from a new computer upgrade? I buy a new laptop every 3-4 years, and I buy a nice one, but generally speaking I feel like we've been kind of flat in terms of usable power for a while. 6 or 8 years ago I switched to an SSD, and THAT w…

2014 I replaced my MBA 11" with a maxed out MBP 15", and the performance difference was crazy.

Buuuut, my next laptop (if I stick with Apple) will probably be a MB 12" with medium to low specs, with most of my demanding dev stuff moved to a Linux server.