Re: Scaling noise

William Lee Irwin III
2003-09-03T18:06:41Z

On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 01:07:03PM -0400, Brown, Len wrote:
>> Fortunately seek time on RAM is lower than disk;-) Sure, parallel
>> systems are a waste of effort for running a single copy of a single
>> threaded app, but when you have multiple apps, or better yet MT apps,
>> you win. If system performance were limited over time to the rate of
>> decrease in RAM latency, then we'd be in sorry shape.

On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 10:32:13AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> For a lot of applications we are. Go talk to your buddies in the processor
> group, I think there is a fair amount of awareness that for most apps faster
> processors aren't doing any good. Ditto for SMP.

You're thinking single-application again. Systems run more than one
thing at once.

On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 01:07:03PM -0400, Brown, Len wrote:
>> Back to the original off-topic...
>> An OEM can spin their motivation to focus on smaller systems in 3 ways:
>> 1. large server sales are a small % of industry units
>> 2. large server sales are a small % of industry revenue
>> 3. large server sales are a small % of industry profits
>> Only 1 is true.

On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 10:32:13AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> How about some data to back up that statement?
> Sun: ~11B/year and losing money, heavily server based
> Dell: ~38B/year and making money, 99% small box based
> If you were gambling with _your_ money, would you invest in Sun or Dell?

That's neither sufficient information about those two companies nor a
sufficient number of companies to make a proper empirical statement
about this. I really don't care for a stock market update, but I'm just
not going to believe anything this sketchy (from either source, actually).

-- wli