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GeneralRe: Google programming language scorecard: How C, C++, Dart, Rust, Go rate for Fuchsia Pin
Patrice T25-Feb-20 10:23
mvePatrice T25-Feb-20 10:23 
GeneralRe: Google programming language scorecard: How C, C++, Dart, Rust, Go rate for Fuchsia Pin
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 21:17
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 21:17 
NewsSSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises Pin
Kent Sharkey25-Feb-20 7:45
staffKent Sharkey25-Feb-20 7:45 
GeneralRe: SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises Pin
Nelek25-Feb-20 8:56
protectorNelek25-Feb-20 8:56 
GeneralRe: SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises Pin
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 21:48
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 21:48 
GeneralRe: SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises Pin
Daniel Pfeffer25-Feb-20 22:44
professionalDaniel Pfeffer25-Feb-20 22:44 
GeneralRe: SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises Pin
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 22:50
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 22:50 
GeneralRe: SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises Pin
kalberts26-Feb-20 2:09
kalberts26-Feb-20 2:09 
You are certainly right about the importance of caching. When you talk about 64GB of RAM, you should relate that to the "working set" concept: There are certain kinds of software that manages to address all of 64 GByte of data frequently - but not very many users need to simulate oil fields, or calculate their own weather forcast, or things like that. The major part of those 64GB are "never" referenced, once initialization is complete. Memory mapped executable files are great: The application code might fill gigabytes on disk, but if you make use of only 10% of the functionality, 90% may never be paged into RAM. Lots of users - even people with a computer related education - grossly overestimate the real RAM requirements. (Those who really need 64GB are not guessing/estimating, they know what they need - and can afford it. 64 GByte costs around 350-400 Euro nowadays, right?)

There is also a strong tendendy to overestimate the need for disk speed. Much large-volume data nowadays is real-time media. Once you have the capacity to stream HD video, even if you double your line speed, you won't be watching that two hour feature in one hour... Around here, fiber internet connection is standandard, 100 MBps is the minimum rate, enough to give each family member his own HD video stream. Yet people ask me why I won't upgrade to 500 Mbps, or 1 Gbps, for faster transfer. What for? Downloading a full length movie could be completed in a minute, rather than ten minutes, but if I download it, it is because I will watch it later; it makes no difference if the transfer completes a few minute later.

When I started video editing on my PC, the editor had to benchmark my harddisk to verify that it was fast enough. Since then, disk speeds have increased by a magnitude and a half; I never later had to benchmark any disk. Modern disks do extensive caching, and newer file systems allocating extents (rather than small pages) makes disk accesses and look-ahead caching far more efficient. Your video editing will not be much faster if you replace the old magnetic disk with an SSD. Very little of your time is spent waiting for the disk! We are no longer in the DOS age of PIO disk access where every byte had to go via the CPU registers - DMA came to PCs well above 20 years ago.

Even for CPU power, the real need for raw power is often overestimated. E.g. even today, I have collagues who point out as one great advantage of interpreted languages is that "you don't have to wait for the compilation". I run a complete rebuild, and typically, 6-8 compiled modules are emitted per second. Using either a make system explicitly or and IDE doing incremental builds, you rarely wait more than a single-digit number of seconds. Of course you could dream of a complete rebuild on every keystroke, but that is not a hard need.

Professionals working at supercomputer centers obviously do actual performance measurements. For the less professional ones, there percentage of "feel", "think" and "have a distinct impression" that the performance has improved, is quite high. There is very little blind testing of these feelings, very little measurement. I have a friend insisting that his monthly vacuum cleaning of the mainboard makes his PC significantly faster for a couple of weeks, until it is again slowed down from the dust Smile | :) . In the old days of the floating point unit being separate (like 80287), there were lots of people on the internet insisting that Widows startup were sooo much faster after installation of an 87 (but MS asserted that there was not a single FP instruction in Windows code).

There are, of course, bottlenecks. But choose the bottlenecks to break with care! One example: I have been using the SketchUp 3D drawing system for many years. The first years I let SU steer my PC upgrade schedule. Then, after one SU update, I could forget about upgrades: Graph transformations had been moved out from the CPU to the graphics card. In a single sweep, the perceived performance improvment was larger than my previous five CPU upgrades. The graphics card had been hanging around for a long time, the question was about the software utilizing it!

I am not sure that hard disk speed is the most essential bottleneck to break for most of us, at least not for stationary PCs. For a laptop, power consumption, weight, no noise and shock tolerance may be essential, but not for a stationary PC. With SSD, startup is faster (both boot-up and application startup), but once running, you will rarley notice the difference. My main disk is an SSD, but I am just about to buy another two 8 TB disks dedicated to video storage. A plain magnetic disc can deliver several continous HD videostreams in parallell; I don't need more than that. SSD costs 3-4 times as much, and I would gain nothing in practice. (Besides, SSD units of 8TB is not common, so I would run out of SATA sockets).
GeneralRe: SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises Pin
Nelek26-Feb-20 3:49
protectorNelek26-Feb-20 3:49 
NewsWindows 10 could get a new Start menu as Microsoft kills off one of its most useless features Pin
Kent Sharkey25-Feb-20 7:30
staffKent Sharkey25-Feb-20 7:30 
GeneralRe: Windows 10 could get a new Start menu as Microsoft kills off one of its most useless features Pin
Nelek25-Feb-20 8:49
protectorNelek25-Feb-20 8:49 
GeneralRe: Windows 10 could get a new Start menu as Microsoft kills off one of its most useless features Pin
Patrice T25-Feb-20 9:16
mvePatrice T25-Feb-20 9:16 
GeneralRe: Windows 10 could get a new Start menu as Microsoft kills off one of its most useless features Pin
Joe Woodbury25-Feb-20 13:29
professionalJoe Woodbury25-Feb-20 13:29 
GeneralRe: Windows 10 could get a new Start menu as Microsoft kills off one of its most useless features Pin
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 20:49
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 20:49 
GeneralRe: Windows 10 could get a new Start menu as Microsoft kills off one of its most useless features Pin
GuyThiebaut25-Feb-20 21:28
professionalGuyThiebaut25-Feb-20 21:28 
GeneralRe: Windows 10 could get a new Start menu as Microsoft kills off one of its most useless features Pin
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 22:51
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 22:51 
NewsFirefox turns encrypted DNS on by default to thwart snooping ISPs Pin
Kent Sharkey25-Feb-20 6:45
staffKent Sharkey25-Feb-20 6:45 
GeneralRe: Firefox turns encrypted DNS on by default to thwart snooping ISPs Pin
Richard Deeming25-Feb-20 7:07
mveRichard Deeming25-Feb-20 7:07 
GeneralRe: Firefox turns encrypted DNS on by default to thwart snooping ISPs Pin
Nelek25-Feb-20 8:48
protectorNelek25-Feb-20 8:48 
GeneralRe: Firefox turns encrypted DNS on by default to thwart snooping ISPs Pin
Joe Woodbury25-Feb-20 13:30
professionalJoe Woodbury25-Feb-20 13:30 
GeneralRe: Firefox turns encrypted DNS on by default to thwart snooping ISPs Pin
Kent Sharkey25-Feb-20 14:11
staffKent Sharkey25-Feb-20 14:11 
NewsA peanut butter brand has put its spoon into the GIF pronunciation debate Pin
Kent Sharkey25-Feb-20 6:45
staffKent Sharkey25-Feb-20 6:45 
GeneralRe: A peanut butter brand has put its spoon into the GIF pronunciation debate Pin
Eddy Vluggen25-Feb-20 10:55
professionalEddy Vluggen25-Feb-20 10:55 
GeneralRe: A peanut butter brand has put its spoon into the GIF pronunciation debate Pin
Joe Woodbury25-Feb-20 13:31
professionalJoe Woodbury25-Feb-20 13:31 
GeneralRe: A peanut butter brand has put its spoon into the GIF pronunciation debate Pin
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 22:52
Mark_Wallace25-Feb-20 22:52 

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