Hacker News Reader

Comment by athom | Hacker News Reader

As ARM Research architect, Jonathan Beard describes it, the way systems work now is a lot like ordering a tiny watch battery online and having it delivered in a box that could fit something an order of magnitude larger and with a lot of unnecessary packaging around it to account for the extra space

Seems that's how most stuff we order online IS delivered. I can see the point, but maybe "unnecessary" is more a matter of perspective?

View on HN

I think the point refers to getting overly large boxes, ones way bigger than necessary. It's easier for the people shipping and stocking boxes to have a fixed set of boxes to pick from versus stocking customized sizes. From that perspective it's great. Probably not so good for packing as much as possible in the lorry...

Well, we're up against limits of nature now. We can't go smaller; CPUs won't get much faster automatically. They'll only get wider and use existing space more efficiently.

Exactly. Architects are a bit like that kid that took all the easy classes, got all A's and just now realized they had to work in the real world. Things are going to likely change rapidly in micro architecture and architecture over the next ten years, far more than in the past thirty. Frequency scaling and node shrinkage killed the art. I can't wait to see more from this guy, the paper referenced on another comment seems to be vey close to what is described by Beard in this position piece. I wonder what else he has going on.

If a theoretical technology that can remove that "unnecessary" waste exists wouldn't it be valid to say it is an unnecessary waste even if only in theory?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com