[offtopic] Re: ugh, moore's "law"

[Alan Horkan <horkana tcd ie>]

On 23 Aug 2002, Lars Clausen wrote:

> Date: 23 Aug 2002 11:06:57 -0500
> From: Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>
> Reply-To: dia-list gnome org
> To: dia-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: ugh, moore's "law"
>
> On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Jason Maiorana wrote:
> [...]
> > CPU/compenent speeds have been supposedly going up, yet somehow
> > computers seem aesthetically slower as the years go by.
>
> At a conference a few years back, one talk included a graph of CPU speed
> (in raw MHz) vs. benchmark performance.  The performance/MHz was just about
> constant.  What have all those compiler writers been doing all these years?

ha ha ha

I have 600 Mhz Pentium 1 why is it not faster than my 200 MHz Pentium 3???

/me keeps getting asked hardware questions by people who know i study
computers.

If you dont know enough about computers that you have to ask me what you
should buy then you probably should buy a Mac.

it is so sad it is almost funny that people think Macs are slower because
of the Mega Hertz rating.


> Two things: Improving usability and keeping up with the CPUs.  Many CPU
> changes, notably RISC, assumed that compilers were smart enough to make
> good code.  That's extra burden on the compilers.  Also, while Java may be
> slow in raw performance, it's fast when you factor in development time --
> in most cases.  There's a reason Dia is in C and many scientific programs
> are in Fortran.  It's all about the right tools.
>
> Anyway, we're way off topic here.

And how, :)
but it a nice antidote to other less pleasant offtopic threads and short
of meeting up at the next Guadec or something it is as close as we are
likely to get to socialising together.

Later
Alan

http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~horkana/