Posted by
Hemos
on from the conjecture-or-convinced dept.
vmircea writes "If you think clock speed is the most important measure of a processor, IBM's Bernie Meyerson wants you to reconsider. Meyerson, who heads research and development efforts for Big Blue's semiconductor group, says processor chip speed is old news. Go to ZDNet for the interview."
Speed
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The end result that people care about. When a system is purchased,
and people are looking at transaction processing capabilities, that is an end
result. They are not looking at whether the clock frequency of the
microprocessor is 8 percent higher.
Isn't that how non-idiots have been looking at it, all along?
I don't think this is really a new attitude.
Re:Speed
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
agreed.
Except taht most people stop their research into what chip they want when they see a RBFN with the letters "MHz" or "GHz" printed next to it. Nevermind how other factors influnence true optimality of a chip. I personally would much rather see a standard numerical rating be developed (FLOPS may work), except that some (coughIntelCough) wont use taht in marketing materials because it shows inefficiency. (Much like how Hummers dont print their gas mileage on showroom display materials)
Personally, I'd like to see programmable hardware...Essentially an FPGA section on CPUs. Programs would provide the OS's scheduler with a circuit layout, and the scheduler would have the layout programmed in when needed.
sure... great idea. just like the idea of putting an array of dsps on the pci bus, to act as a generic accelerator unit.
of course, the problem with both of these is: who is going to program for these? some specialized high performance applications, perhaps (openssl, linux kernel, autocad,...). will "grep" or "apache" make use of these accelerators? can they be programmed in c? are they portable? do you have to be a "ibm power fpga programmer" to know how to use these, or can any programmer easily port their skills here? having programmed dual core risc+dsp chips, i will tell you, the complexity of splitting a task between the risc and the dsp is much much much much greater than doing in on the risc alone. when you distance yourself from general-purpose computing, you lose the support of just about everyone.
Sensationlist statement
by
AKAImBatman
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
He doesn't really appear to offer any substantial concepts for performance improvements. Shrinking the die and upping the clock speed are the most common performance improvements because they are the most effective. Changes to the chips structure or internal coding only result in a one time 10-20% performance boost. And concepts like programmable gateways still have to follow the laws of physics.
Sure, you may be able to optimize a few very common pathways. But you simply can't optimize all of them. Thus a "perfect" algorithm for pathway adaption would again net you one of those 10-20% increases on a general processor. A dedicated machine (e.g. One attempting to calculate PI to infinity) could of course see several times the performance, but then you have to weigh an expensive programmable chip against a cheap custom chip.
Re:Sensationlist statement
by
DigitalDreg
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You missed the point.
He is saying that people have run out of the easy optimizations. That it is more important now to concentrate on the performance of the whole package, not just the core.
To that end people providing their own macro designs will allow Power to extend in ways IBM isn't planning on. Need better I/O handling? Somebody might sell it to you. Need a cache controller that handles a high number of outstanding cache requests because your software isn't cache friendly? Somebody might have that too. Need to find these people with these designs? They'll all be talking to each other as part of PowerPC consortium...
This opens up avenues for more creative uses that compliement the basic core, and helps bring down design time. Before you might have not even contemplated a custom chip based on a PowerPC design. In a few years, you might be able to glue a few building blocks together to get it.
Seems IBM is embracing open standards
by
foidulus
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
in both hardware and software. While their plan doesn't seem nearly as open as GPL software, it's still a step in the right direction.
If they succeed it doesn't bode well for the x86 architecture, which seems to be a victim of it's own success. They seem to be trapped into just adding faster clocks instead of changing the architecture. They still have neat things like Centrino, but the marketing droids seem to have control over the engineers there. Every update just seems to be a faster clock speed without regards to how much it actually increases performance(I think this is evident in a lot of consumer pc's were they put in the latest and greatest pentium processor but then add in a paltry amount of RAM) I'm not saying I know more than the Intel engineers, I think they are doing a fabulous job with what they have to work with, but...I don't know where I am going with this, I'll just sit back and burn some karma now....damn ADD
Re:Seems IBM is embracing open standards
by
drinkypoo
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The x86 instruction set is obviously not the future for desktop systems, at least not in the form of x86. In the near term it looks like that future is x86-64, which is not really the same as the x86 instruction set (which itself has changed over time) though it is dramatically similar of course.
x86 processors have managed to bump the clock and improve the architecture. You have to do both to be successful. Having higher clock rates IS a benefit even if you do nothing else, so long as the rest of the system can keep up. IMO you can give most of the credit for the improvement of x86 to AMD, which really pushed its limits admirably. They also didn't manage to push clock rates as far (at least, not as soon) so they had to add more functional units and tie them all in, which is exactly what you're talking about, an alternative to increasing cycles per second.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Wow, what a paradigm shift
by
JazzHarper
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I beg to differ. It's relevant to the self-esteem of the average consumer, when comparing his purchase to that of his neighbor.
I find it ironic that MIPS were dropped from most advertising, in part, because they were misleading, so manufacturers went back to quoting clock frequency, which is even moreso. --
Re:Poeple still want more ghz...
by
Short+Circuit
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What bugs me is how AMD and Intel kicked up their processor speeds. Both of them made their pipelines deeper.
While that's fine for some workloads, with more instructions being executed at the same time, it harms workloads that depend heavily on the results of current calculations to figure out what to do next.
Intel eased the problem by implementing hyperthreading; I'm surprised we haven't seen the same thing come out of AMD's corner.
It's all marketing
by
grunt107
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The processor speed for marketers is comparable to the engine size wars in the 60s/70s. If I say I have a 402 (6.6L) in my Chevelle and Bob next door has a (snicker) 350 (5.7L) in his Nova, my car gets the approving nods, but may not be faster since the Nova is lighter. Now compare said Chevelle w/today's Z06 'vette. Little 'wimpy' vette has just a 5.7L, but kicks the snot outta the Chevelle in performance.
IBM, and other marketing 'geniuses', need to name their products to entice the 'mine is bigger' crowd. Right now, in the consumer computer realm, GHz talks. Most non-IT people I know will spout the "My PC is 4GHz - what's yours?" mantra when a 2.8 Opteron w/SCSI320 will kick its butt. The enlightened will know, but 'tis the general ignorant masses that have the buying power.
Re:It's all marketing
by
pknoll
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· Score: 4, Insightful
To extend your car analogy a bit further -
Both a Kenworth over-the-road tractor and a Formula 1 car have about 1000 horsepower. But one will accelerate a LOT faster than the other. And one can tow 20 tons of stuff behind it.
Even IF MHz were directly comparable, you still couldn't judge the speed of a computer without considering what that computer was built to do.
Re:Poeple still want more ghz...
by
Jameth
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"It makes poeple think that prosesor runs faster when it realy doesn't."
Actually, it makes people think the processor runs faster when it really *does*. Which is why I like their numbering scheme: it compensates for consumer ignorance.
Make the chips run cooler
by
Hoonis
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Corporate datacenters are now filling up with half-full racks because cooling & power requirements are through the roof. You end up being unable to increase compute resources because you have to put in fewer of the faster systems, gaining you nothing.
So hey, if you're listening harware vendors, see if you can't simply make the dang things run cooler on less power before you speed them up!
GHz is the wrong metric
by
kennykb
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Most applications nowadays founder on memory
hierarchy performance (L1/L2 cache, main store,
backing store). Cache misses are a usual killer,
and fetch prediction doesn't work very well at
all yet.
Even on the base CPU, the most important metric,
I find, is "MIPS per watt". That's what determines
how much horsepower you can get off a given amount
of cooling, which is the real limiting factor for
CPU speed.
Re:Poeple still want more ghz...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It makes poeple think that prosesor runs faster when it realy doesn't.
Partially. When I bought my 2200+, I understood that it ran at 1800 MHZ. I looked at all the specs first. And then I saw the comparison to the Intel machines that I was looking at. For less money, I bought my AMD parts that put the Intel equivelent to shame. At 1800 MHZ, the Intel couldn't come close. At 2200 MHZ, as AMD wants you to think of when comparing chips, they were pretty close. The Intel chip beat the AMD in a few catagories. But I wasn't prepared to drop the extra $200 at the time for the few improvements getting the Intel would provide. That was the why I went with AMD...better value and performance for your money.
a stick is a club...
by
simpl3x
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· Score: 3, Insightful
business is often about defining your strategy for approaching new business. ibm is stating that openess will benefit their business. others have recognized this holistic approach to systems design, which from the beginning of computing was really required for high end/specialized systems. some wanted openess for additional reasons, such as freedom in beer and speech. so the same stick has simply been picked up to use in a more competetive environment against businesses not capable of integrating both sides of the computing environment.
so long as everybody has their needs met, it's a good thing(tm).
what I want to see
by
AviLazar
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't care if they want to name it by processing speed, bus speed, or hell how much donkey speed it has - i just want it to be consistent!!!
That means give me Intel processor 1, then the future processor named Intel Processor 2 WILL be better then the first one, and the third one will be better, etc.
Stop coming out with funky new names to confuse me (and the less informed computer users, which i am probably in that category).
If I want to look at the specs I will, but at least make it easy for people to realize which processor is the latest and greatest!
I think the worst case for this is some of the graphics cards - whats better the 9600 version or the FX version or the super version or the crack version?
Come on, have some sympathy on us ----damn marketers!
--
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
If you can beat 'em, change the rules of the game.
by
stienman
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
IBM is attempting to change the rules of performance measurement. They are doing this by educating their customers. Inherently, people want a single performance metric that says X is better than Y because this perfromance metric says so.
IBM would prefer customers to come to them and ask IBM, "Which processor is better?" rather than rely on an external, easily verifiable, though not accurate, single number indicator.
The truth, as we all know, is that there is no single metric since each processor has strengths and weaknesses and various applications rely on these strengths differently.
They are also opening their processors to the end users a little more, almost as a jab at Intel. Intel has microcode, but you'll never see it or get to modify it. But the very presence of microcode in almost every modern general purpose CPU means that performance can be enhanced and tailored for each application with very little processor change.
So IBM is letting people get closer with the processor to enhance performance with very little risk or effort.
The kicker is that it's not simple, so only a few large manufacturers and some dedicated homebrewers will really have anything to show for it.
Thus it's a marketting ploy intended to raise questions about current performance metrics in the minds of indecisive consumers.
But then, when has the CPU war ever been about anything but marketting?
-Adam
Please RTFA
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is very significant, and not because of the clock cycle bit. 90% of the comments are responding to the article title, not content. Typical.
The open architecture ecosystem can have a far reaching fundamental effect on potential market-space of CPU dependent products.
This is far bigger news than any of Sun's open sourcing or Brown v. Tanenbaum.
Scientific computing. Here are things I am working on now that I wish I had more power for:
Artificial vision - I wrote and use analysis software that tracks motion of magnetic poles on the Sun's surface. There are about 10,000 - 50,000 poles visible on the surface at any given time. It takes a full day for my dual Athlon to process a full day's worth of data. A 10x speedup would be great!
Space physics simulations - trying to describe the behavior of solar storms is very computationally intensive. It takes a minimum of ~1016 floating-point operations to simulate even a simple coronal mass ejection.
That's a CPU-year.
Sound reprocessing - as I digitize my LP collection, I depop and noise-gate every track. It takes 2-3x as much clock time to digitally process the music as it does to play the LP into my sound card to be digitized.
Compilation - enough said
Stupidity in scientific software. A lot of my scientific work involves one-off codes to perform a particular operation on my data. Robust, reliable, transparent algorithms are just as important as the final result (after all, how can you trust a result if you haven't spent the time to understand the algorithm and all its nuances)? The stupider the algorithm, the better. If I can save a day of analytical work with a CPU-hogging numerical solution that takes 10 minutes to code and an hour to run, I've saved most of a day -- unless I have to run that code more than ten times. But as my CPU gets better the tradeoff improves and I can get my work done faster. The savings here isn't in direct CPU time, it's in allowing me to use stoopider code more of the time.
I'd really like an AI to write/. replies for me so I can get more work done.
Actually, it does. Just not across different processor lines.
Apple's message has actually been "don't pay attention to clock speeds since we suck at that". That's part of their problem of "we're stuck using a decade-old POS G4 while everyone else has a modern processor". Now that they have a modern processor themselves in the G5 they're much more agressive with their performance claims.
Once Intel bails on their crappy P4 concept clock rates will largely normalize. Pentium-M, Athlon64 and G5 all have clock rates that are more alike than different. That will be the future once the P4 is euthanized. The whole "clock rate doesn't matter" was invented by Apple as an excuse for being hopelessly behind and is now propped up by Intel and their stupid 30-stage pipelines. Clock rates do matter. There's only two ways to go faster---get more done per clock or get more clocks per second. Designers try to do both and marketers produce BS.
This was rated "+5 Interesting!" Yikes! "+5 Funny" would be appropriate!
The "Bogo" stands for "Bogus" for those of you who don't know.
I got a chuckle out of this.
-- "-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Re:Re-programmable
by
harrkev
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I would disagree with the last statement. Xilinx FPGAs are perfect for an experimentor. They can be easily programmed with a JTAG cable, just like everybody elses parts. And Xilinx has low-cost and free design suites available. This makes is perfect for development/debug. A home experimentor is likely to make a LOT of mistakes when designing, and EEPROM-based parts take longer to program, and they DO wear out after burning too many times.
However, in order to program a Xilinx part in an embedded system (without a PC attached) requires a way to program a serial EEPROM. Programming this might be a pain, but Atmel (for one) makes serial EEPROMS for just this purpose, and will also be happy to sell you a programming cable.
-- "-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Re:Power is not for PC
by
cbiffle
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The extra CPU performance is now suddenly needed because IBM keeps encouraging ISV'S to write for Websphere, in Java, so you now need 10 times more memory and CPU performance than you previously did to perform the same task.
Your post is, for the most part, dead-on and well-put, but I can tell you're not an enterprise Java developer.
Our transaction processing systems were recently moved to Java from C (Solaris on a Sunfire 6800, 8-way SPARC).
Yes, they require more memory. This doesn't really concern us because we spend far less time tracking down dangling pointers and memory leaks now. The increase in memory seems to be about 4x-6x for our system, which still brings it in under a gig.
No, they do not require more CPU. Several parts of our application actually run faster than the C version. I credit the Hotspot on-the-fly optimization crap for this to some degree, but I'm honestly not sure what the deal is. (And I'm our profiling guy. Ain't that sad?:-)
But more importantly, as you mentioned, on big iron the I/O throughput tends to be the bottleneck anyway. Our transaction-processing systems tend to sit happily with significant idle percentages while positively slamming the disks and databases.
We're running inside Sun's Solaris JVM in a hacked-up proprietary version of EJB, using Tomcat for the frontend. I can't imagine that Websphere has much higher overhead, though I could certainly be wrong.
It is still relevent
by
AmericanInKiev
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The hottest consumer electronic product right now may well be the digital camera.
Given that it takes a lot more cycles to process an image - than say - a spreadsheet - I think the consumer very much wants processing speed.
The next hot item will be likely be digital videos actually going somewhere - other than the shoebox
This will be even more cycle intensive.
The market responds to technology in fits and starts - but the analysis says many consumer products are still throttled by the speed on consumer PC's
People buying HDTV today will want HDTV camcorders tomorrow.
A computer that can render HDTV signals from disk will be a benchmark standard in only a few years.
The idea that spreadsheet surfers are satisfied with clock speed is quiet impressive - and passe.
AIK
Re:Bogo Mips
by
evilviper
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
How you got modded to "+5: Interesting" I'll never know.
Good example of what morons most moderators are, eh? (my pet peave for a while now)
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He doesn't really appear to offer any substantial concepts for performance improvements. Shrinking the die and upping the clock speed are the most common performance improvements because they are the most effective. Changes to the chips structure or internal coding only result in a one time 10-20% performance boost. And concepts like programmable gateways still have to follow the laws of physics.
Sure, you may be able to optimize a few very common pathways. But you simply can't optimize all of them. Thus a "perfect" algorithm for pathway adaption would again net you one of those 10-20% increases on a general processor. A dedicated machine (e.g. One attempting to calculate PI to infinity) could of course see several times the performance, but then you have to weigh an expensive programmable chip against a cheap custom chip.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
in both hardware and software. While their plan doesn't seem nearly as open as GPL software, it's still a step in the right direction.
If they succeed it doesn't bode well for the x86 architecture, which seems to be a victim of it's own success. They seem to be trapped into just adding faster clocks instead of changing the architecture. They still have neat things like Centrino, but the marketing droids seem to have control over the engineers there. Every update just seems to be a faster clock speed without regards to how much it actually increases performance(I think this is evident in a lot of consumer pc's were they put in the latest and greatest pentium processor but then add in a paltry amount of RAM) I'm not saying I know more than the Intel engineers, I think they are doing a fabulous job with what they have to work with, but...I don't know where I am going with this, I'll just sit back and burn some karma now....damn ADD
I beg to differ. It's relevant to the self-esteem of the average consumer,
when comparing his purchase to that of his neighbor.
I find it ironic that MIPS were dropped from most advertising, in part, because
they were misleading, so manufacturers went back to quoting clock frequency, which
is even moreso.
--
What bugs me is how AMD and Intel kicked up their processor speeds. Both of them made their pipelines deeper.
While that's fine for some workloads, with more instructions being executed at the same time, it harms workloads that depend heavily on the results of current calculations to figure out what to do next.
Intel eased the problem by implementing hyperthreading; I'm surprised we haven't seen the same thing come out of AMD's corner.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
The processor speed for marketers is comparable to the engine size wars in the 60s/70s. If I say I have a 402 (6.6L) in my Chevelle and Bob next door has a (snicker) 350 (5.7L) in his Nova, my car gets the approving nods, but may not be faster since the Nova is lighter. Now compare said Chevelle w/today's Z06 'vette. Little 'wimpy' vette has just a 5.7L, but kicks the snot outta the Chevelle in performance. IBM, and other marketing 'geniuses', need to name their products to entice the 'mine is bigger' crowd. Right now, in the consumer computer realm, GHz talks. Most non-IT people I know will spout the "My PC is 4GHz - what's yours?" mantra when a 2.8 Opteron w/SCSI320 will kick its butt. The enlightened will know, but 'tis the general ignorant masses that have the buying power.
"It makes poeple think that prosesor runs faster when it realy doesn't."
Actually, it makes people think the processor runs faster when it really *does*. Which is why I like their numbering scheme: it compensates for consumer ignorance.
Corporate datacenters are now filling up with half-full racks because cooling & power requirements are through the roof. You end up being unable to increase compute resources because you have to put in fewer of the faster systems, gaining you nothing.
So hey, if you're listening harware vendors, see if you can't simply make the dang things run cooler on less power before you speed them up!
Even on the base CPU, the most important metric, I find, is "MIPS per watt". That's what determines how much horsepower you can get off a given amount of cooling, which is the real limiting factor for CPU speed.
It makes poeple think that prosesor runs faster when it realy doesn't.
Partially. When I bought my 2200+, I understood that it ran at 1800 MHZ. I looked at all the specs first. And then I saw the comparison to the Intel machines that I was looking at. For less money, I bought my AMD parts that put the Intel equivelent to shame. At 1800 MHZ, the Intel couldn't come close. At 2200 MHZ, as AMD wants you to think of when comparing chips, they were pretty close. The Intel chip beat the AMD in a few catagories. But I wasn't prepared to drop the extra $200 at the time for the few improvements getting the Intel would provide. That was the why I went with AMD...better value and performance for your money.
business is often about defining your strategy for approaching new business. ibm is stating that openess will benefit their business. others have recognized this holistic approach to systems design, which from the beginning of computing was really required for high end/specialized systems. some wanted openess for additional reasons, such as freedom in beer and speech. so the same stick has simply been picked up to use in a more competetive environment against businesses not capable of integrating both sides of the computing environment.
so long as everybody has their needs met, it's a good thing(tm).
I don't care if they want to name it by processing speed, bus speed, or hell how much donkey speed it has - i just want it to be consistent!!! That means give me Intel processor 1, then the future processor named Intel Processor 2 WILL be better then the first one, and the third one will be better, etc. Stop coming out with funky new names to confuse me (and the less informed computer users, which i am probably in that category). If I want to look at the specs I will, but at least make it easy for people to realize which processor is the latest and greatest! I think the worst case for this is some of the graphics cards - whats better the 9600 version or the FX version or the super version or the crack version? Come on, have some sympathy on us ----damn marketers!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
IBM is attempting to change the rules of performance measurement. They are doing this by educating their customers. Inherently, people want a single performance metric that says X is better than Y because this perfromance metric says so.
IBM would prefer customers to come to them and ask IBM, "Which processor is better?" rather than rely on an external, easily verifiable, though not accurate, single number indicator.
The truth, as we all know, is that there is no single metric since each processor has strengths and weaknesses and various applications rely on these strengths differently.
They are also opening their processors to the end users a little more, almost as a jab at Intel. Intel has microcode, but you'll never see it or get to modify it. But the very presence of microcode in almost every modern general purpose CPU means that performance can be enhanced and tailored for each application with very little processor change.
So IBM is letting people get closer with the processor to enhance performance with very little risk or effort.
The kicker is that it's not simple, so only a few large manufacturers and some dedicated homebrewers will really have anything to show for it.
Thus it's a marketting ploy intended to raise questions about current performance metrics in the minds of indecisive consumers.
But then, when has the CPU war ever been about anything but marketting?
-Adam
This is very significant, and not because of the clock cycle bit. 90% of the comments are responding to the article title, not content. Typical.
The open architecture ecosystem can have a far reaching fundamental effect on potential market-space of CPU dependent products.
This is far bigger news than any of Sun's open sourcing or Brown v. Tanenbaum.
Actually, it does. Just not across different processor lines.
Apple's message has actually been "don't pay attention to clock speeds since we suck at that". That's part of their problem of "we're stuck using a decade-old POS G4 while everyone else has a modern processor". Now that they have a modern processor themselves in the G5 they're much more agressive with their performance claims.
Once Intel bails on their crappy P4 concept clock rates will largely normalize. Pentium-M, Athlon64 and G5 all have clock rates that are more alike than different. That will be the future once the P4 is euthanized. The whole "clock rate doesn't matter" was invented by Apple as an excuse for being hopelessly behind and is now propped up by Intel and their stupid 30-stage pipelines. Clock rates do matter. There's only two ways to go faster---get more done per clock or get more clocks per second. Designers try to do both and marketers produce BS.
This was rated "+5 Interesting!" Yikes!
"+5 Funny" would be appropriate!
The "Bogo" stands for "Bogus" for those of you who don't know.
I got a chuckle out of this.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I would disagree with the last statement. Xilinx FPGAs are perfect for an experimentor. They can be easily programmed with a JTAG cable, just like everybody elses parts. And Xilinx has low-cost and free design suites available. This makes is perfect for development/debug. A home experimentor is likely to make a LOT of mistakes when designing, and EEPROM-based parts take longer to program, and they DO wear out after burning too many times.
However, in order to program a Xilinx part in an embedded system (without a PC attached) requires a way to program a serial EEPROM. Programming this might be a pain, but Atmel (for one) makes serial EEPROMS for just this purpose, and will also be happy to sell you a programming cable.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Your post is, for the most part, dead-on and well-put, but I can tell you're not an enterprise Java developer.
Our transaction processing systems were recently moved to Java from C (Solaris on a Sunfire 6800, 8-way SPARC).
Yes, they require more memory. This doesn't really concern us because we spend far less time tracking down dangling pointers and memory leaks now. The increase in memory seems to be about 4x-6x for our system, which still brings it in under a gig.
No, they do not require more CPU. Several parts of our application actually run faster than the C version. I credit the Hotspot on-the-fly optimization crap for this to some degree, but I'm honestly not sure what the deal is. (And I'm our profiling guy. Ain't that sad?
But more importantly, as you mentioned, on big iron the I/O throughput tends to be the bottleneck anyway. Our transaction-processing systems tend to sit happily with significant idle percentages while positively slamming the disks and databases.
We're running inside Sun's Solaris JVM in a hacked-up proprietary version of EJB, using Tomcat for the frontend. I can't imagine that Websphere has much higher overhead, though I could certainly be wrong.
The hottest consumer electronic product right now may well be the digital camera.
Given that it takes a lot more cycles to process an image - than say - a spreadsheet - I think the consumer very much wants processing speed.
The next hot item will be likely be digital videos actually going somewhere - other than the shoebox
This will be even more cycle intensive.
The market responds to technology in fits and starts - but the analysis says many consumer products are still throttled by the speed on consumer PC's
People buying HDTV today will want HDTV camcorders tomorrow.
A computer that can render HDTV signals from disk will be a benchmark standard in only a few years.
The idea that spreadsheet surfers are satisfied with clock speed is quiet impressive - and passe.
AIK
How you got modded to "+5: Interesting" I'll never know.
Good example of what morons most moderators are, eh? (my pet peave for a while now)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant