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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

#331

Post by CamouflagedKiwi »

svantana wrote: post #319
joshka wrote: post #315

At my former job at a FAANG, I did the math on allocating developers machines with 16GB vs 64GB based on actual job tasks with estimates of how much thumb twiddling waiting time that this would save and then multiplied that out by the cost of the developer's time. The cost benefit showed a reasonable ROI that was realized in Weeks for Senior dev salaries (months for juniors). Based on this, I strongly believe that if…

No doubt the math checks out, but I wonder if developer productivity can be quantified that easily. I believe there's a lot of research pointing to people having a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive capacity available per day, and that aligns well with my personal experience. A lot of times, waiting for the computer to finish feels like a micro-break that saves up energy for my next deep thought process.

Well depends what kind of time periods you're talking. I've seen one in the past that was 60 minutes vs. 20 minutes (for a full clean compile, but often that is where you find yourself) - that is far more than a micro-break, that is a big chunk of time wasted.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#332

Post by kelnos »

machomaster wrote: post #322
kelnos wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux kernel compilation time depends heavily on what you're compiling though. You can have wildly different compilation times just by enabling or disabling some drivers or subsystems.

Let's also not forget that kernel was not stagnant, but grew a lot over the years.

Also true! Hard to say which was moving faster, though: CPU speed increases & RAM amount increase, or the additional code and complexity written into the kernel.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#333

Post by kelnos »

fmajid wrote: post #74
zh3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just went from i3770 (12 years old!) to a 9900x as I tend to wait for a doubling of single core performance before upgrading (got through a lot of PCs in the 386/486 era!). It's actually only 50% faster according to cpubenchmark [0] but is twice as fast in local usage (multithread is reported about 3 times faster). Also got a Mac Mini M4 recently and that thing feels slow in comparison to both these systems - li…

M4 is amazing hardware held up by a sub-par OS. One of the biggest bottlenecks when compiling software on a Mac is notarization, where every executable you compile causes a HTTP call to Apple. In addition to being a privacy nightmare, this causes the configure step in autoconf based packages to be excruciatingly slow.

Wait wait wait wait wait. So you're saying that a configure script that compiles a 5-line test program (and does this 50 times) to check if a feature is present or a compiler flag works... will have to call out to Apple for permission to do so??

Ugh. Disgusting. So glad I stopped using macOS years ago. (Even if this isn't actually true... still glad I stopped using Apple's we-know-better-than-you OS years ago.)

It is amazing to me that people put up with this garbage and don't use an OS that respects them more.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#334

Post by TacticalCoder »

bullen wrote: post #293

Is it worth to keep your old CPU? I still run a 6600 (65W peak) from 2016 as my daily driver. I have replaced the SSD once (MLC lasted 5 years, hopefully forever with SLC drive from 2011?), 2x 32GB DDR4 sticks (Kingston Micron lasted 8 years, with aliexpress "samsung" sticks for $50 a pop) and Monitor (Eizo FlexScan 1932 lasted 15! years RIP with Eizo RadiForce 191M, highly recommend with f.lux/redshift for exception…

> Is it worth to keep your old CPU?

I just "re-cycle" them.

Bought a 7700X two years ago. My 3600X went to my wife. Previous machine (forgot which one it was but some Intel CPU) went to my mother-in-law. Machine three machines before that, my trusty old Core i7-6700K from 2015 (I think 2015): it's now a little Proxmox server at home.

I'll probably buy a 9900X or something now: don't want to wait late 2026/2027 for Zen 6 to come out. 7700X shall go to the wife, 3600X to the kid.

My machines typically work for a very long time: I carefully pick the components and assemble them myself and then test them. Usually when I pull the plug for the final time, it's still working fine.

But yet I like to be not too far behind: my 7700X from 2022 is okay. But I'll still upgrade. Doesn't mean it's not worth keeping: I'll keep it, just not for me.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#335

Post by compiler-guy »

geor9e wrote: post #236
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…

I know a FAANG company whose IT department, for the last few years, has been "out of stock" for SSD drives over 250GB . They claim its a global market issue (it's not). There's constant complaining in the chats for folks who compile locally. The engineers make $300k+ so they just buy a second SSD from Amazon on their credit cards and self-install them without mentioning it to the IT dept. I've never heard a rational…

Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do other than fuss at some random director or feedback form. Or quit, I guess. But that seems a little extreme.

Anyway, your choices of what to do about idiocy like this are pretty limited.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#336

Post by tuna74 »

incone123 wrote: post #156
Aurornis wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people demanding new top spec MacBook Pros every year aren’t the same people requesting the cheapest Chinese standing desk they can find.

I can understand paying more for fast processors and so on but a standing desk just goes up and down. What features do the high end desks have that I am missing out on?

If you buy from a dealer/manufacturer they come and set up the desk for you. You can also get stuff like really good sound absorbing panels and better integrated electricity and other stuff like that. If you buy system furniture like connected desks and cubibles it is probably the way to go.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#337

Post by xmodem »

alt227 wrote: post #232
xmodem wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Apple switched to their own silicon, I was maintaining the build systems at a scaleup. After I saw the announcement, I immediately knew I needed to try out our workflows on the new architecture. There was just no way that we wouldn't have x86_64 as an implicit dependency all throughout our stack. I raised the issue with my manager and the corporate IT team. They acknowledged the concern but claimed they had enou…

> I raised the issue with my manager and the corporate IT team. > And of course myself and my team took the blame for not preparing ahead of time. If your initial request was not logged and then able to be retrieved by yourself in defence, then I would say something is very wrong at your company.

I could perhaps have been clearer with that point - this was more about public perception. People have a tendency to jump to conclusions - build system is not working, must be the build system team's fault.

But regardless, I already left there a few years back.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#338

Post by arcfour »

svantana wrote: post #319
joshka wrote: post #315

At my former job at a FAANG, I did the math on allocating developers machines with 16GB vs 64GB based on actual job tasks with estimates of how much thumb twiddling waiting time that this would save and then multiplied that out by the cost of the developer's time. The cost benefit showed a reasonable ROI that was realized in Weeks for Senior dev salaries (months for juniors). Based on this, I strongly believe that if…

No doubt the math checks out, but I wonder if developer productivity can be quantified that easily. I believe there's a lot of research pointing to people having a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive capacity available per day, and that aligns well with my personal experience. A lot of times, waiting for the computer to finish feels like a micro-break that saves up energy for my next deep thought process.

Simple estimates work surprisingly well for a lot of things because a lot of the 'unquantifiable' complexity being ignored behaves like noise. When you have dozens of factors pulling in different directions—some developers multitask better, some lose flow more easily, some codebases are more memory-hungry, and so on—it all tends to just average out, and the result is reasonably accurate. Accurate enough that it's useful data to make a decision with, at least.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#339

Post by arcfour »

SlowTao wrote: post #323
bullen wrote: post #293

Is it worth to keep your old CPU? I still run a 6600 (65W peak) from 2016 as my daily driver. I have replaced the SSD once (MLC lasted 5 years, hopefully forever with SLC drive from 2011?), 2x 32GB DDR4 sticks (Kingston Micron lasted 8 years, with aliexpress "samsung" sticks for $50 a pop) and Monitor (Eizo FlexScan 1932 lasted 15! years RIP with Eizo RadiForce 191M, highly recommend with f.lux/redshift for exception…

Really depends on your use case. I personally still run my 17 year old 2.4GHz Core 2 duo with 4GB of RAM as my daily runner. I simply do not hit the walls even on that thing. Most folks here simply would not accept that and not because they are spoilt but their works loads demand more.

I love those as routers, firewalls, and other random devices on my mess of a home network where I just set things up for fun. Or as little NASes for friends and family that I can give to them for free or whatever.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#340

Post by almostgotcaught »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #316
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…

Another thing to keep in mind when compiling is adding more cores doesn't help with link time, which is usually stuck to a single core and can be a bottleneck.

there are plenty of linkers that parallelize linking

https://github.com/rui314/mold?tab=readme-ov-file#why-is-mol...

https://llvm.org/devmtg/2017-10/slides/Ueyama-lld.pdf

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