On Sat, 2010-10-02 at 21:21 +0200, Don wrote: > retard wrote: [ . . . ] > > I meant that computers become more efficient. I've upgraded my system two > > times since this discussion last appeared here. If you wait 18 months, the > > 20 seconds becomes 10 seconds, in 36 months 5 seconds. It's the Moore's > > law, you know. > > Sadly, software seems to be bloating at a rate which is faster than > Moore's law. Part of my original post noted that it was much slower than > my old 1MHz Commodore 64 took to boot my development environment from a > cassette tape! So I still take it as a good sign that the rate of > bloating is slower than Moore's law.
Faster processor speeds in the period 1950--2005 was not actually anything to do with Moore's Law per se -- Moore's Law was about the number of transistors per chip, not the speed of operation of those transistors. Since around 2005 processor speeds have stopped increasing due to inability to deal with the heat generation. Instead Moore's Law (which for the moment still applies) is leading to more and more cores per chip all running at the same speed as previously -- around 2GHz. So the ability to improve performance of code by just waiting and buying new kit is over -- at least for now. If you do not turn your serial code into parallel code there will be no mechanism for improving performance of that code. A bit sad for inherently serial algorithms. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:[email protected] 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: [email protected] London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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