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Comment by xvedejas | Hacker News Reader

It seems likely that the more efficient our processors become, the larger share of the world's energy we'll devote to them [0]. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, if we're getting more than proportionally more utility out of the processors, but I worry about that too [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

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>Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, if we're getting more than proportionally more utility out of the processors

The trend seems to be that we get only a little bit of extra utility out of a lot of extra hardware performance.

When the developer upgrades their PC it's easier for them to not notice performance issues. This creates the situation where every few years you need to buy a new PC to do the things you always did.

If the developer doesn't notice the performance issues, maybe they move on to the next thing more quickly and get more done overall?

I'm not sure if that's the case, but it may be we aren't looking for utility in the right places.

I'm sure a lot of developers upgrade their PCs (they were called workstations at a time) because of material problems - keyboards getting mechanically worse, and laptops can't easily get keyboard fixed, screens getting dead pixels, sockets getting loose, hard-to-find batteries getting less charge, and maybe some electronics degradation.

Another reason is upgrades to software, which maintain general bloat, and which is hard to control; new hardware is easier. That's however is very noticeable.

On top of that, just "better" hardware - say, in a decade one can have significantly better screen, more cores and memory, faster storage; makes easier for large software tasks (video transcoding, big rebuilds of whole toolchains and apps, compute-hungry apps like ML...)

>laptops can't easily get keyboard fixed

This is a frustrating part of recent laptops, but it doesn't have to be this way - my X230's keyboard is removable with a few screws.

Is that the case for our highly centralized clouds? No one's putting a liquid nitrogen cooled desktop in their office so this type of hardware would be owned by companies who are financially incentivized to drive down the overhead costs of commoditized functionality like networking, data replication and storage, etc. leaving just inefficient developer logic which I assume is high value enough to justify it.

It's quite common in the cloud industry to trade hardware for shorter development cycle these days too. I think that's because there is still very high growth in the sector and companies all want to be the first offering feature X. As cloud services become more mature I expect people will be more cost sensitive. Though when that will happen I cannot say.

I think it's largely because deceloper time is so expensive. Hardware seems cheap in comparison in many contexts.

> The trend seems to be that we get only a little bit of extra utility out of a lot of extra hardware performance.

"hardware giveth, and software taketh away"

Nice! Another (slightly more pessimistic) one is "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster".

Andy Giveth, Bill Taketh

Andy Grove and Bill gates

So by dropping support for old CPUs, the Linux kernel burns a bridge. That conversation makes more sense now.

> Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, if we're getting more than proportionally more utility out of the processors, but I worry about that too

I have two points to comment on this matter.

Point 1: The only reason I would worry or be concerned about it is if we are using terribly-inefficient programming languages. There are languages (that need not be named) which are either 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, or even 40x more inefficient than a language that has a performant JIT, or that targets native code. (Even JIT languages like JavaScript as still a lot less efficient because of dynamic typing. Also, in some popular complied-to-native languages, programmers tend to less efficient data structures, which results in lower performance as well.)

Point 2: If the inefficiency arises out of more actual computation being done, that's a different story, and I AM TOTALLY A-OK with it. For instance, if Adobe Creative Suite uses a lot more CPU (and GPU) in general even though it's written in C++, that is likely because it's providing more functionality. I think even a 10% improvement in overall user experience and general functionality is worth increased computation. (For example, using ML to augment everything is wonderful, and we should be happy to expend more processing power for it.)

Both are important and 1 can be even more useful. Use 1 to easier build very complex systems. Once they are working and you are selling them - optimize. Without#1 you can't get #2

In the future, I don't see why there's anything holding us back from splitting a bunch of atoms and having tons of cheap energy.

Nuclear fission has well-known drawbacks and risks that are fundemantal, they will never be engineered away (risk of catastrophic explosion, huge operating costs, risk of nuclear waste leakage, risk of nuclear weapon proliferation). Why do you think the future will be significantly different from the present in this regard?

These risks will most likely only reduce over time as our science and knowledge develops, barring a world-affecting mistake or war. If we can make a ton of energy, we can do many other things like launching the waste into outer space, and having a positive ROI by making more energy than it cost.

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