Comments for The rise of the inevitable bitpipe http://bitpipe.wordpress.com Whatever it is, I'm against it! Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:43:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU Comment on Concurrent idiocy by Joachim http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/concurrent-idiocy/#comment-152 Joachim Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:34:23 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/concurrent-idiocy/#comment-152 Aloha! Also, the basic idea with multiple cores in desktop machines are not to get massive single thread speed, but having multiple threads - or more precisely - more programs running fast at the same time. If you only run one program you don't get any benefit (unless the app is multithreaded and not I/O or memory bound), but the OS and other apps can be much snappier anyway. The big reason for multicore is that it's basically the last way to get good use for the transistors we get with new process nodes. When on-chip caches are usint 90% of the die and any further IPC increases are diminished by the exponential complexity required to get another 10% more performance, instantiating more cores are the way to go. But the SW side sucks. Big time. Aloha!

Also, the basic idea with multiple cores in desktop machines are not to get massive single thread speed, but having multiple threads - or more precisely - more programs running fast at the same time.

If you only run one program you don’t get any benefit (unless the app is multithreaded and not I/O or memory bound), but the OS and other apps can be much snappier anyway.

The big reason for multicore is that it’s basically the last way to get good use for the transistors we get with new process nodes. When on-chip caches are usint 90% of the die and any further IPC increases are diminished by the exponential complexity required to get another 10% more performance, instantiating more cores are the way to go.

But the SW side sucks. Big time.

]]> Comment on Concurrent idiocy by Mats Henricson http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/concurrent-idiocy/#comment-149 Mats Henricson Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:38:14 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/concurrent-idiocy/#comment-149 You may be right, but you look at it from the wrong perspective. It is a fact that we're going to be drowning in cores. It is also a fact that concurrent programming is too hard unless you're an expert. This is where Scala and other possible languages comes in. It is simply the only solution if we want to use the dozens of cores we're facing in the future. You may be right, but you look at it from the wrong perspective. It is a fact that we’re going to be drowning in cores. It is also a fact that concurrent programming is too hard unless you’re an expert. This is where Scala and other possible languages comes in. It is simply the only solution if we want to use the dozens of cores we’re facing in the future.

]]> Comment on Ah the freshness of a new year by Niklas Derouche http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-137 Niklas Derouche Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:46:02 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-137 Exactly. Most people only experience that (which means that they don't really) when they are on vacation. And for those measly two weeks it might be annoying to be somewhat out of reach. Perhaps the cell phone reception is kind of crap or the bandwidth towards the usual resources is less than they've come to expect. But they are still officially on vacation. Very few people have ever experienced what it means to be completely cut off from all the tools that we have grown used to (ever so quickly btw) for any extended period of time. Exactly. Most people only experience that (which means that they don’t really) when they are on vacation. And for those measly two weeks it might be annoying to be somewhat out of reach. Perhaps the cell phone reception is kind of crap or the bandwidth towards the usual resources is less than they’ve come to expect. But they are still officially on vacation. Very few people have ever experienced what it means to be completely cut off from all the tools that we have grown used to (ever so quickly btw) for any extended period of time.

]]> Comment on Ah the freshness of a new year by Patrik Nilsson http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-136 Patrik Nilsson Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:39:24 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-136 When I first started working out here at the end of the world, I was hit with a massive realization of just how dependent we as persons already are on our IT infrastructure. I actually felt like Manfred Macx in Accelerando, when his glasses got stolen. It was as if part of my nervous system got amputated. The quick google, the background check on wikipedia, etc, are all instinctive actions done almost unconsciously. Having to wait 20 minutes for a quick answer or not getting any at all really screws up you normal psyche. And I am still not used to it. Just trying to write this short comment at the same time as checking up some old story on DN froze Firefox up for 15 minutes, as the DN page had to download 100s of KBs of javascript before the page even started to render... something that Firefox considers a good call to just not respond at all in any tab for a long while... Patrik When I first started working out here at the end of the world, I was hit with a massive realization of just how dependent we as persons already are on our IT infrastructure. I actually felt like Manfred Macx in Accelerando, when his glasses got stolen. It was as if part of my nervous system got amputated. The quick google, the background check on wikipedia, etc, are all instinctive actions done almost unconsciously. Having to wait 20 minutes for a quick answer or not getting any at all really screws up you normal psyche.

And I am still not used to it. Just trying to write this short comment at the same time as checking up some old story on DN froze Firefox up for 15 minutes, as the DN page had to download 100s of KBs of javascript before the page even started to render… something that Firefox considers a good call to just not respond at all in any tab for a long while…

Patrik

]]> Comment on Ah the freshness of a new year by Niklas Derouche http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-134 Niklas Derouche Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:03:08 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-134 Also I think that outsourcing ceases to exist at that point. It doesn't make sense to shift out core parts of the organisation (and to the people who say that IT isn't a core part of their business I say that I've got a bridge to sell them for cheap) in a world where location is no longer a pressing issue. Find the right staff, give them the right tools and let me work in a space where they are comfortable. (And if you are going to have weak AI monsters turn up during lunch hour, please do your hack'n'slash in one of the unused conference rooms - some people are trying to fake eat) Also I think that outsourcing ceases to exist at that point. It doesn’t make sense to shift out core parts of the organisation (and to the people who say that IT isn’t a core part of their business I say that I’ve got a bridge to sell them for cheap) in a world where location is no longer a pressing issue. Find the right staff, give them the right tools and let me work in a space where they are comfortable. (And if you are going to have weak AI monsters turn up during lunch hour, please do your hack’n’slash in one of the unused conference rooms - some people are trying to fake eat)

]]> Comment on Ah the freshness of a new year by Niklas Derouche http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-133 Niklas Derouche Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:17 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-133 Perhaps. On the other hand I think that the emergence of a global middle class, affected by the same ennui here as there and with a sharper and sharper increase in salaries will make that particular difference pretty uninteresting. The costs of indian software engineers are getting to the point where outsourcing (from a scandinavian perspective at least) makes a lot less sense, especially because of the inevitable issues that turn up when you try to outsource blocks of work. If you have a virtual workspace then I think we can fairly assume that salaries (although reflecting somewhat on a local level) will probably gravitate towards some value that is common - i e there won't be a magnitude of difference as the case might have been 15 years ago. Say it might be 20 percent. Not really a lot to bother with. Then it becomes more of an issue of whether the local infrastructure and culture can support a non traditional way of working. In a flat world organisation also need to be flat and I think that certain geographical regions have a head start there. And bla bla bla. Perhaps. On the other hand I think that the emergence of a global middle class, affected by the same ennui here as there and with a sharper and sharper increase in salaries will make that particular difference pretty uninteresting. The costs of indian software engineers are getting to the point where outsourcing (from a scandinavian perspective at least) makes a lot less sense, especially because of the inevitable issues that turn up when you try to outsource blocks of work. If you have a virtual workspace then I think we can fairly assume that salaries (although reflecting somewhat on a local level) will probably gravitate towards some value that is common - i e there won’t be a magnitude of difference as the case might have been 15 years ago. Say it might be 20 percent. Not really a lot to bother with. Then it becomes more of an issue of whether the local infrastructure and culture can support a non traditional way of working. In a flat world organisation also need to be flat and I think that certain geographical regions have a head start there. And bla bla bla.

]]> Comment on Ah the freshness of a new year by Mats Henricson http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-132 Mats Henricson Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:14:49 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ah-the-freshness-of-a-new-year/#comment-132 Hehe, outsourcing gets a completely different twist if we get totally virtual workplaces. Maybe I'll end up pair programming with an indian guy who likes being up late? That is perhaps a bit scary, from an overpaid-Swedish-engineer-perspective. Hehe, outsourcing gets a completely different twist if we get
totally virtual workplaces. Maybe I’ll end up pair programming
with an indian guy who likes being up late? That is perhaps a
bit scary, from an overpaid-Swedish-engineer-perspective.

]]> Comment on Death - the season to be jolly by Joachim http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/death-the-season-to-be-jolly/#comment-124 Joachim Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:28:30 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/death-the-season-to-be-jolly/#comment-124 Aloha! Nice collection of flicks. But those five Daniel Tosh links have been toshed by Youtube. Aloha!

Nice collection of flicks. But those five Daniel Tosh links have been toshed by Youtube.

]]> Comment on An offer you can’t refuse - Redmond style by Niklas Derouche http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/an-offer-you-cant-refuse-redmond-style/#comment-99 Niklas Derouche Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:36:38 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/an-offer-you-cant-refuse-redmond-style/#comment-99 True. True.

]]> Comment on An offer you can’t refuse - Redmond style by joachimdurchholz http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/an-offer-you-cant-refuse-redmond-style/#comment-98 joachimdurchholz Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:30:01 +0000 http://bitpipe.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/an-offer-you-cant-refuse-redmond-style/#comment-98 @Niklas: of course the translation is horrible! It's not even valid English. That's to be expected from a machine translation though. It can give you an impression about the topics coverend and a very rough approximation of the points made. In this case, it was enough :-) Good to see your translation though, that allowed me to verify where my interpretation of the machine translation was correct and where it was off the mark. @Niklas: of course the translation is horrible! It’s not even valid English.
That’s to be expected from a machine translation though. It can give you an impression about the topics coverend and a very rough approximation of the points made. In this case, it was enough :-)
Good to see your translation though, that allowed me to verify where my interpretation of the machine translation was correct and where it was off the mark.

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