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The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

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Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#101

Post by bluGill »

pydry wrote: post #58
fsloth wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think abundance vs speed is the right lens. No user actually wants abundance. They use few programs and would benwfit if those programs were optimized. Established apps could be optimized to the hilt. But they seldom are.

>No user actually wants abundance. No, all users just want the few programs which they themselves need. The market is not one user, though. It's all of them.

Users only want 5% of the features of the few programs they use. However everyone has a different list of features and a different list of programs. And so to get a market you need all the features on all the programs.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#102

Post by don_searchcraft »

100% agree with Carmack. There was a craft in writing software that I feel has been lost with access to inexpensive memory and compute. Programmers can be inefficient because they have all that extra headroom to do so which just contributes to the cycle of needing better hardware.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#103

Post by inetknght »

tgv wrote: post #11
AndrewDucker wrote: post #2

Well, yes. It's an economic problem (which is to say, it's a resource allocation problem). Do you have someone spend extra time optimising your software or do you have them produce more functionality. If the latter generates more cash then that's what you'll get them to do. If the former becomes important to your cashflow then you'll get them to do that.

It's the kind of economics that shifts the financial debt to accumulating waste, and technical debt, which is paid for by someone else. It's basically stealing. There are --of course-- many cases in which thorough optimizing doesn't make much sense, but the idea of just adding servers instead of rewriting is a sad state of affairs.

> It's basically stealing.

This is exactly right. Why should the company pay an extra $250k in salary to "optimize" when they can just offload that salary to their customers' devices instead? The extra couple of seconds, extra megabytes of bandwidth, and shittery of the whole ecosystem has been externalized to customers in search of ill-gotten profits.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#104

Post by forinti »

hiq wrote: post #93
forinti wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daily drivers at home are an i3-540 and and Athlon II X4. Every time something breaks down, I find it much cheaper to just buy a new part than to buy a whole new kit with motherboard/CPU/RAM. I'm a sysadmin, so I only really need to log into other computers, but I can watch videos, browse the web, and do some programming on them just fine. Best ROI ever.

> I can watch videos Can you watch H.265 videos? That's the one limitation I regularly hit on my computer (that I got for free from some company, is pretty old, but is otherwise good enough that I don't think I'll replace it until it breaks). I don't think I can play videos recorded on modern iPhones.

Yes, they play just fine with Gnome Videos or VLC. Both machines have a GeForce GT 710 on them.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#105

Post by xnorswap »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we've squandered that 1000x not on bounds checking but on countless layers of abstractions and inefficiency.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

It vastly depends on what software you're forced to use.

Here's some software I use all the time, which feels horribly slow, even on a new laptop:

Slack.

Switching channels on slack, even when you've just switched so it's all cached, is painfully slow. I don't know if they build in a 200ms or so delay deliberately to mask when it's not cached, or whether it's some background rendering, or what it is, but it just feels sluggish.

Outlook

Opening an email gives a spinner before it's opened. Emails are about as lightweight as it gets, yet you get a spinner. It's "only" about 200ms, but that's still 200ms of waiting for an email to open. Plain text emails were faster 25 years ago. Adding a subset of HTML shouldn't have caused such a massive regression.

Teams

Switching tabs on teams has the same delayed feeling as Slack. Every iteraction feels like it's waiting 50-100ms before actioning. Clicking an empty calendar slot to book a new event gives 30-50ms of what I've mentally internalised as "Electron blank-screen" but there's probably a real name out there for basically waiting for a new dialog/screen to even have a chrome, let alone content. Creating a new calendar event should be instant, it should not take 300-500ms or so of waiting for the options to render.

These are basic "productivity" tools in which every single interaction feels like it's gated behind at least a 50ms debounce waiting period, with often extra waiting for content on top.

Is the root cause network hops or telemetry? Is it some corporate antivirus stealing the computer's soul?

Ultimately the root cause doesn't actually matter, because no matter the cause, it still feels like I'm wading through treacle trying to interact with my computer.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#106

Post by ricardo81 »

Minimalism is excellent. As others have mentioned, using languages that are more memory safe (by assumption the language is wrote in such a way) may be worth the additional complexity cost.

But surely with burgeoning AI use efficiency savings are being gobbled up by the brute force nature of it.

Maybe model training and the likes of hugging face can avoid different groups trying to reinvent the same AI wheel using more resources than a cursory search of a resource.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#107

Post by thfuran »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #77
Gigachad wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

I'd wager that a 2021 MacBook, like the one I have, is stronger than the laptop used by majority of people in the world. Life on an entry or even mid level windows laptop is a very different world.

I've found so many performance issues at work by booting up a really old laptop or working remotely from another continent. It's pretty straightforward to simulate either poor network conditions or generally low performance hardware, but we just don't generally bother to chase down those issues.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#108

Post by armchairhacker »

Is there or could we make an iPhone-like that runs 100x slower than conventional phones but uses much less energy, so it powers itself on solar? It would be good for the environment and useful in survival situations.

Or could we make a phone that runs 100x slower but is much cheaper? If it also runs on solar it would be useful in third-world countries.

Processors are more than fast enough for most tasks nowadays; more speed is still useful, but I think improving price and power consumption is more important. Also cheaper E-ink displays, which are much better for your eyes, more visible outside, and use less power than LEDs.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#109

Post by HappMacDonald »

ngneer wrote: post #67
titzer wrote: post #12

I like to point out that since ~1980, computing power has increased about 1000X. If dynamic array bounds checking cost 5% (narrator: it is far less than that), and we turned it on everywhere, we could have computers that are just a mere 950X faster. If you went back in time to 1980 and offered the following choice: I'll give you a computer that runs 950X faster and doesn't have a huge class of memory safety vulnerabi…

I agree with the sentiment and analysis that most humans prefer short term gains over long term ones. One correction to your example, though. Dynamic bounds checking does not solve security. And we do not know of a way to solve security. So, the gains are not as crisp as you are making them seem.

You don't have to "solve" security in order to improve security hygiene by a factor of X, and thus risk of negative consequences by that same factor of X.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#110

Post by ubermonkey »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #98

The idea of a hand me down computer made of brass and mahogany still sounds ridiculous because it is, but we're nearly there in terms of Moore's law. We have true 2nm within reach and then the 1nm process is basically the end of the journey. I expect 'audiophile grade' PCs in the 2030s and then PCs become works of art, furniture, investments, etc. because they have nowhere to go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_pr…

The increasing longevity of computers has been impressing me for about 10 years.

My current machine is 4 years old. It's absolutely fine for what I do. I only ever catch it "working" when I futz with 4k 360 degree video (about which: fine). It's a M1 Macbook Pro.

I traded its predecessor in to buy it, so I don't have that one anymore; it was a 2019 model. But the one before that, a 2015 13" Intel Macbook Pro, is still in use in the house as my wife's computer. Keyboard is mushy now, but it's fine. It'd probably run faster if my wife didn't keep fifty billion tabs open in Chrome, but that's none of my business. ;)

The one behind that one, purchased in 2012, is also still in use as a "media server" / ersatz SAN. It's a little creaky and is I'm sure technically a security risk given its age and lack of updates, but it RUNS just fine.

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