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It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

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Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#31

Post by delusional »

2shortplanks wrote: post #3

This article skips a few important steps - how a faster CPU will have a demonstrable improvement on developer performance. I would agree with the idea that faster compile times can have a significant improvement in performance. 30s is long enough for a developer to get distracted and go off and check their email, look at social media, etc. Basically turning 30s into 3s can keep a developer in flow. The critical thing…

I wish I was compiler bound. Nowadays, with everything being in the cloud or whatever I'm more likely to be waiting for Microsoft's MFA (forcing me to pick up my phone, the portal to distractions) or getting some time limited permission from PIM.

The days when 30 seconds pauses for the compiler was the slowest part are long over.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#32

Post by defanor »

This compares a new desktop CPU to older laptop ones. There are much more complete benchmarks on more specialized websites [0, 1].

> If you can justify an AI coding subscription, you can justify buying the best tool for the job.

I personally can justify neither, but not seeing how one translates into another: is a faster CPU supposed to replace such a subscription? I thought those are more about large and closed models, and that GPUs would be more cost-effective as such a replacement anyway. And if it is not, it is quite a stretch to assume that all those who sufficiently benefit from a subscription would benefit at least as much from a faster CPU.

Besides, usually it is not simply "a faster CPU": sockets and chipsets keep changing, so that would also be a new motherboard, new CPU cooler, likely new memory, which is basically a new computer.

[0] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#33

Post by mgaunard »

hulitu wrote: post #21
mgaunard wrote: post #4

I've seen more and more companies embrace cloud workstations. It is of course more expensive but that allows them to offer the latest and greatest to their employees without needing all the IT staff to manage a physical installation. Then your actual physical computer is just a dumb terminal.

> I've seen more and more companies embrace cloud workstations. In which movie ? "Microsoft fried movie" ? Cloud sucks big time. Not all engineers are web developers.

It's for example being rolled out at my current employer, which is one of the biggest electronic trading companies in the world, mostly C++ software engineers, and research in Python. While many people still run their IDE on the dumb terminal (VSCode has pretty good SSH integration), people that use vim or the like work fully remotely through ssh.

I've also seen it elsewhere in the same industry. I've seen AWS workspaces, custom setups with licensed proprietary or open-source tech, fully dedicated instances or kubernetes pods.. All managed in a variety of ways but the idea remains the same: you log into a remote machine to do all of your work, and can't do anything without a reliable low-latency connection.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#34

Post by laidoffamazon »

tgma wrote: post #23
avidiax wrote: post #10

Employers, even the rich FANG types, are quite penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to developer hardware. Limiting the number and size of monitors. Putting speedbumps (like assessments or doctor's notes) on ergo accessories. Requiring special approval for powerful hardware. Requiring special approval for travel, and setting hotel and airfare caps that haven't been adjusted for inflation. To be fair, I know ple…

FANG is not monolithic. Amazon is famously cheap. So is Apple in my opinion based on what I have heard (you get random refurbished hardware that is available not some standardized thing, sometimes with 8GB RAM sometimes something nicer) Apple is also famously cheap on their compensation. Back in the day they proudly said shit to the effect of "we deliberately don't pay you top of the market because you have to love A…

How do you know someone worked at Google?

Don’t worry, they’ll tell you

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#35

Post by juped »

hulitu wrote: post #22

> the top end CPU, AMD Ryzen 9 9950X This is an "office" CPU. Workstation CPUs are called Epyc.

Yeah. I would say, do get a better CPU, but do also research a bit deeper and really get a better CPU. Threadrippers are borderline workstation, too, though, esp. the pro SKUs.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#36

Post by fxtentacle »

I wish I could. But most software nowadays is still limited by single core speed and that area hasn’t seen relevant growth in years.

„Public whipping for companies who don’t parallelize their code base“ would probably help more. ;)

Anyway, how many seconds does MS Teams need to boot on a top of the line CPU?

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#37

Post by ralferoo »

einpoklum wrote: post #17

This is quite the silly argument. * "people" generally don't spend their time compiling the Linux kernel, or anything of the sort. * For most daily uses, current-gen CPUs are only marginally faster than two generations back. Not worth spending a large amount of money every 3 years or so. * Other aspects of your computer, like memory (capacity mostly) and storage, can also be perf bottlenecks. * If, as a developer, yo…

Just because it doesn't match your situation, doesn't make it a silly argument.

Even though I haven't compiled a Linux kernel for over a decade, I still waste a lot of time compiling. On average, each week I have 5-6 half hour compiles, mostly when I'm forced to change base header files in a massive project.

This is CPU bound for sure - I'm typically using just over half my 64GB RAM and my development drives are on RAIDed NVMe.

I'm still on a Ryzen 7 5800X, because that's what my client specified they wanted me to use 3.5 years ago. Even upgrading to (already 3 years old) 5950X would be a drop-in replacement and double the core count so I'd expect about double the performance (although maybe not quite, as there my be increased memory contention). At current prices for that CPU, that upgrade would pay for itself in terms within 1-2 weeks.

The reason I don't upgrade is policy - my client specified this exact CPU so that my development environment matches their standard setup.

The build farm argument makes sense in an office environment where the majority of developer machines are mostly idle most of the time. It's completely unsuitable for remote working situations where each developer has a single machine and latency and bandwidth to shared resource is slow.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#40

Post by mgaunard »

milesrout wrote: post #7
mgaunard wrote: post #4

I've seen more and more companies embrace cloud workstations. It is of course more expensive but that allows them to offer the latest and greatest to their employees without needing all the IT staff to manage a physical installation. Then your actual physical computer is just a dumb terminal.

Great, now every operation has 300ms of latency. Kill me

All of the big clouds have regions throughout the world so you should be able to find one less than 100ms away fairly easily.

Then realistically in any company you'll need to interact with services and data in one specific location, so maybe it's better to be colocated there instead.

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