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The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

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837 points turrini | 2 comments | 13 May 25 10:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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titzer ◴[13 May 25 12:05 UTC] No.43971962[source]▶
I like to point out that since ~1980, computing power has increased about 1000X.

If dynamic array bounds checking cost 5% (narrator: it is far less than that), and we turned it on everywhere, we could have computers that are just a mere 950X faster.

If you went back in time to 1980 and offered the following choice:

I'll give you a computer that runs 950X faster and doesn't have a huge class of memory safety vulnerabilities, and you can debug your programs orders of magnitude more easily, or you can have a computer that runs 1000X faster and software will be just as buggy, or worse, and debugging will be even more of a nightmare.

People would have their minds blown at 950X. You wouldn't even have to offer 1000X. But guess what we chose...

Personally I think the 1000Xers kinda ruined things for the rest of us.

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1. billfor ◴[13 May 25 15:00 UTC] No.43973716[source]▶
I made a vendor run their buggy and slow software on a Sparc 20 against their strenuous complaints to just let them have an Ultra, but when they eventually did optimize their software to run efficiently (on the 20) it helped set the company up for success in the wider market. Optimization should be treated as competitive advantage, perhaps in some cases one of the most important.
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2. MonkeyClub ◴[14 May 25 13:30 UTC] No.43984314[source]▶
> Optimization should be treated as competitive advantage

That's just so true!

The right optimizations at the right moment can have a huge boost for both the product and the company.

However the old tenet regarding premature optimization has been cargo-culted and expanded to encompass any optimization, and the higher-ups would rather have ICs churn out new features instead, shifting the cost of the bloat to the customer by insisting on more and bigger machines.

It's good for the economy, surely, but it's bad for both the users and the eventual maintainers of the piles of crap that end up getting produced.