Re: Scaling noise

Larry McVoy
2003-09-03T18:11:02Z

On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 11:07:02AM -0700, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> 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.

Then explain why hyperthreading is turned off by default in Windows.

> 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).

Translation: "I don't like your data so I'm ignoring it".

How you can look at those two companies and not see what is obvious is
beyond me but everyone is entitled to their opinion. It's nice when your
opinion is based on data, not religion.
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Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm