201–210 of 225 posts
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> Can you explain how to square that with the link saying compressing data hasn't gotten any faster since 2005? Compression may be bottlenecked by ram (L2 or L3 cache) access speed, or maybe even dram (main memory) access speed.
I have an i7-3770k and an i9-12900k sitting here. Do you know of a benchmark I could run myself that would give me the same results on both CPUs?
I wish there was a version that normalized the times somehow instead of showing absolute times. Most of these numbers will get smaller simply because CPUs get faster, but it would be super helpful to get an accurate read whether the ratios of e.g. l1 to l2 to l3 to main memory lookup latencies changed significantly.
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The parent comment said no one uses drives strictly faster than 7200.
Pretty sure 10K RPM drives are used too.
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No, at the speed of light 150 ms is about long enough to send a packet from SF to Amsterdam and then send the reply back the long way around the entire rest of the planet.
https://wondernetwork.com/pings/San%20Francisco
An instructive thing here is that a lot of stuff has not improved since ~2004 or so, and working around those things that have not improved (memory latency from ram all the way down to l1 cache really) requires fine control of memory layout and minimizing cache pollution, which is difficult to do with all of our popular garbage collected languages, even harder with languages that don't offer memory layout controls, a…
It's pretty remarkable that, for efficient data processing, it's super super important to care about memory layout / cache locality in intimate detail, and this will probably be true until something fundamental changes about our computing model. Yet somehow this is fairly obscure knowledge unless you're into serious game programming or a similar field.
An instructive thing here is that a lot of stuff has not improved since ~2004 or so, and working around those things that have not improved (memory latency from ram all the way down to l1 cache really) requires fine control of memory layout and minimizing cache pollution, which is difficult to do with all of our popular garbage collected languages, even harder with languages that don't offer memory layout controls, a…
It's pretty remarkable that, for efficient data processing, it's super super important to care about memory layout / cache locality in intimate detail, and this will probably be true until something fundamental changes about our computing model. Yet somehow this is fairly obscure knowledge unless you're into serious game programming or a similar field.
It's a pretty sad state of affairs when the main way we talk about algorithm performance suggests that traversing a linked list is as fast as traversing an array.
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We really need to go back to 1 supercontinent
Direct point to point conduits carrying fiber would reduce latency to a worst case of 21ms, but requires a fiber that doesn't melt at core temps (around 5200C).
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Well, RAM is significantly faster than even SSD, and now I don't have to muck about w/ a 2nd drive :) Not to mention the spinning rust is cheaper.
Sure, but that RAM isn't :) I can get a 60gb ssd for under 20 bucks (I just checked 18.99 on amazon - even I'm a little surprised at how cheap that is) That 32gb of ram is at least a crisp hundred (which also - fucking mind blowing. First time I ever added a part to a PC, it was to add 256mb of ram, and that was huge deal)
I remember the first memory stick I bought (a measly 4mb of RAM) and even wholesale via a friend who worked for a large PC repair shop, it was still $450 give or take.
Now 30 years later, my most recent memory purchase was eight 32gb ECC RDIMMs for about the same price. So not only did the amount of ram per dollar increase 64,000x, it’s also WAY faster and more resilient.
Amazing performance improvements, except no improvement at all on the packet roundtrip time to Netherlands. Someone should really work on that.
The great circle distance between SF and Amsterdam is about 5,450 miles. A round trip is 10,900 miles. At the speed of light, that's 58.5 milliseconds. So in theory, infinitely efficient computers (and some sort of light-in-a-vacuum wire) and networking equipment could knock 60% off that time, but no more. However, I suspect one big problem is that there are a number of hops between the Netherlands and San Francisco.…
There’s tons of possible routes, but here is a probable one:
SFO -> NJ -> UK -> NL -> AMS = ~6,250mi one way minimum GC distance, probably closer to 7k-7,500mi in reality
The majority of transatlantic landings are along the Jersey shore, but could also be Long Island, NY, or Boston / Virginia Beach vicinity too.