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

It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

blog.howardjohn.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 522 posts

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#401

Post by swat535 »

Aurornis wrote: post #117
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…

Every well funded startup I’ve worked for went through a period where employees could get nearly anything they asked for: New computers, more monitors, special chairs, standing desks, SaaS software, DoorDash when working late. If engineers said they needed it, they got it. Then some period of time later they start looking at spending in detail and can’t believe how much is being spent by the 25% or so who abuse the p…

Seriously? You can't budget an extra 10-20k for hardware upgrades for the Software Engineer that you are paying 300k a year for ?

Plus, not to mention the return on investment you get from retaining the talent and the value they add to your product and organization.

If you walk into a mechanic shop, just the Snap On primary tool kit is like 50k.

It always amazes me that companies go cheap on basic tools for their employees, yet waste millions in pointless endeavors.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#402

Post by bpye »

saati wrote: post #250
the__alchemist wrote: post #198

Tangent: IMO top tier CPU is a no brainer if you play games, run performance-sensitive software (molecular dynamics or w/e), or compile code. Look at GPU purchasing. It's full of price games, stock problems, scalpers, 3rd party boards with varying levels of factory overclock, and unreasonable prices. CPU is a comparative cake walk: go to Amazon or w/e, and buy the one with the highest numbers in its name.

The 8 core X3D chips beat the 16 core ones on almost all games, so that's not that simple.

Can’t you pin a game to the 8 threads with the extra cache on the 16 core parts to get equivalent performance?

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#404

Post by credit_guy »

My explanation:corporations want to benefit from scale. That means lots of computers with identical specs. Not only everyone gets the same machine, they get the same machine for many years. It's not unthinkable for a spec to stay constant for 5 years. In exchange for this stability, the makers of the machines (Dell, HP) can lower the price significantly. As a corporation you can buy a very powerful machine for something that a regular consumer needs to pay about twice the price. But that's when the spec is new. As years pass, a machine with the same spec gets to be downright sluggish.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#405

Post by loeg »

Aeolun wrote: post #155
loeg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe anyone is losing >1% productivity from these measures (at FANG employers).

Actually, just time spent compiling, or waiting for other builds to finish makes investing in the top level macbook pro worth it every 3 years. I think the calculation assumed something like 1-2% of my time was spent compiling, and I cost like $100k per year.

Who is still doing builds on developer laptops instead of a remote build farm? You can have so much more compute available when it doesn't need to be laptop form factor.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#406

Post by humanrebar »

Aurornis wrote: post #148
humanrebar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the mentality is offensive? Or is there a business justification I am missing? Note that employers do this as well. A classic one is a manager setting a deadline that requires extreme crunches by employees. They're not necessarily compensating anyone more for that. Are the managers within their rights? Technically. The employees could quit. But they're shaving hours, days, and years off of employees wi…

It’s basic expense fraud. If a company policy says you can expense meals when taking clients out, but sales people started expensing their lunches when eating alone, it’s clearly expense fraud. I think this is obvious to everyone. Yet when engineers are allowed to expense meals when they’re working late and eating at the office, but people who are neither working late nor eating at the office start expensing their me…

> It’s basic expense fraud.

I'm making the case that mandatory unpaid overtime is effectively wage theft. It is legal in the US because half of jobs there are "exempt" from the usual overtime protections. There's no ethical reason for that, just political ones.

At any rate, I think people who want to crack down on meal expenses out of a sense of justice should get at least as annoyed by employers taking advantage of their employees in technically allowed ways.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#408

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #290
dcrazy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it “soft fraud” when a manager at an investment bank regularly demands unreasonable productivity from their junior analysts, causing them to work late and effectively reduce their compensation rate? Only if the word “abuse” isn’t ambiguous and loaded enough for you!

Your employer being unreasonable is not an excuse to defraud him in return. Negotiate for better conditions. If agreement cannot be reached, find another job.

[deleted]

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#409

Post by roncesvalles »

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…

Not providing 2 monitors to those who want is hare-brained. As far as I'm concerned, 2 monitors = 2x more efficient working.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#410

Post by hypercube33 »

bluGill wrote: post #346
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 got my boss to get me the most powerful server we could find, $15000 or so. In benchmarks there was minimal benefit and sometimes a loss going with more than 40 cores even though it has 56. (52? - I can't check now) sometimes using more cores slows the build down. We have concluded that memory bandwidth is the limit, but are not sure how to prove it.

If that's true than have you looked at the threadripper or the new Ryzen AI+ 395? I think it has north of 200gbps
Post reply on HN