[extropy-chat] Optimal computer configurations [Was: Commentary: Does Karl Schroeder's opinion reallymatter?]

[Russell Wallace]

On 4/30/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> Not really!  Hypertransport &  multi-gigabit ethernet = good good good.
> Cell microprocessors are kinda good good good.
> Highly parallel graphics cards are somewhat less good good good.
>

There are two different issues here, and you're making correct statements
about one but overlooking the other.

Architecture matters when you're choosing a system for your particular job,
and yes, you're right about which architectures are good choices for things
like molecular modeling.

But in the long run architecture matters less than process technology. The
Athlon-64 I'm typing this on is far from optimized for molecular modeling
(which is what it's spending most of its time on right now) - but it's much
more effective at it anyway than an optimal design of the past. Process
technology accounts for most of the hardware R&D cost and most of the
performance improvement, and process technology is driven by the aggregate
demand for denser chips - and most of that's in things like PC and console
CPUs and graphics chips, PDAs and cell phones, and RAM (and increasingly
nowadays Flash - that market is starting to pay for top of the line fabs,
not just take the leavings).

So yes, people using lots of transistors in "bad" architectures are still
paying their share. By all means encourage better architectures - but let's
also make the scarcity to abundance transition in computing resources
generally, and stop behaving like an animal that's spent its life in a ten
foot cage, and on release keeps pacing in a ten foot circle.
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