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Where Have All The Cycles Gone?

Mai writes "Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn't improved much over the past 15 years. This article takes a look at where all the precious processor time and memory are going."

21 of 854 comments (clear)

  1. My CPU Usage by fembots · · Score: 5, Funny

    2% word processing
    3% gaming
    5% internet
    90% feet warming

    1. Re:My CPU Usage by BeyondALL · · Score: 5, Funny

      that's why I run Seti@Home in the winter :)

      --
      "If you keep an open mind people will throw a lot of garbage in it."
  2. This week's action item by fembots · · Score: 5, Funny

    Launch a few applications simultaneously and time their start-ups. Try it again in five years to see whether the time has improved.

    I think it'll be the same, given the same machine.

    1. Re:This week's action item by MrWim · · Score: 3, Funny

      £100000000000000000 pounds for the first person that can accomplish this in a week

  3. What are they talking about? by brian0918 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Windows 3.1 and Notepad run nice and fast on my 3.2GHz 8GB RAM box.

  4. Clippy by rlp · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someone needs to ask Clippy what he's doing with all those spare cycles.

    --
    [Insert pithy quote here]
    1. Re:Clippy by nine-times · · Score: 5, Funny

      Browsing the Staples web site for mail-order brides.

    2. Re:Clippy by dexter+riley · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's a little-known fact that Clippy doesn't really go away when you click "just type the letter without help". He returns to a background process, where he lives with his wife, two kids, and the "Search Companion" Dog. Microsoft Bob lives there, too...well, he actually lives in a virtual cardboard box behind the "bowling alley" thread.

      It's kinda like the Matrix, only less resource-intensive, and without as much "whoa" time.

  5. Reminds me of a song... by nharmon · · Score: 4, Funny

    Where have all the cycles gone, long time passing
    Where have all the cycles gone, long time ago
    Where have all the cycles gone, gone to spyware everyone.

    When will they ever learn?
    When will they ev-ear learn?

    1. Re:Reminds me of a song... by Buran · · Score: 5, Funny

      Where has all the spyware gone? Long time passing?
      Where has all the spyware gone? Long time ago
      Where has all the spyware gone?
      Gone to spammers, everyone.

      When will we ever learn?
      When will we ever learn?

      (Apologies to Mikhail Sholokhov, Pete Seeger & parent poster)

  6. Uhmmm, no. by Scratch-O-Matic · · Score: 4, Funny

    I didn't rtfa, but..no. Nine years ago I used to start my word processor (Ami Pro!), then go take a leak while it loaded. What a BS claim.

    --


    Evil is the money of root.
  7. Where have all the cycles gone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    My girlfriend has a cycle every month. It causes me problems, so I can imagine it must cause some problems for the computer as well.

    1. Re:Where have all the cycles gone? by Stanistani · · Score: 5, Funny

      The time to worry is when this cycle suspends atypically, causing a dependent issue.

    2. Re:Where have all the cycles gone? by the+real+darkskye · · Score: 4, Funny

      So thats where child processes come from!

      --
      Music is everybody's possession.
      It's only publishers who think that people own it.
      Fuck Beta
      ~John Lenno
    3. Re:Where have all the cycles gone? by zCyl · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's why you don't want to fork outside of protected mode.

    4. Re:Where have all the cycles gone? by alexo · · Score: 4, Funny


      >> "My girlfriend has a cycle every month."
      >
      > Heat?


      Running at about 380 nano-Hz, I would rule out heat issues.

  8. DCTI by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 4, Funny

    distributed.net is where all the smart CPU cycles have gone! :)

  9. Re:Just look at the size of a word document today by cosmo7 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Here's that MS Word native format:

    64 bytes: Cryptic Masonic signature
    64 bytes: Reserved for Carnivore
    8KB: Macro playground
    8KB: Random extracts from King James Bible
    64 bytes: Run-length encoded document contents
    8KB: Uncompressed copy of above for compatibility

  10. Re:Just look at the size of a word document today by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 3, Funny
    64 bytes: Cryptic Masonic signature

    As a Mason, let me be clear: the file format may indeed be cryptic, but we had nothing to do with this one.

    Besides, we're more interested in handshakes and networking. We let the Teamsters handle the obfuscation and misdirection stuff.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  11. Thats easy by BCW2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I had a new Dell 3.4 come into the shop last week. It was slower than our cash register box(450 PII). Of course, if any box out there had 64 processes running at start up it would be a bit slow. The customer had the box for 3 weeks. First scan with Ad-Aware = 2803 critical items. A new store record. Plus 247 on Spybot, 8 virii, 15 trojans. I'm really surprised it didn't blue screen at boot (had 2 of those last week).

    Crap uses up processor time.

    --
    Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
  12. Re:Just look at the size of a word document today by rs79 · · Score: 3, Funny
    " _real hackers_ would use straight TeX or runoff or raw postscript!"

    Oh, please, can we? I had one of the first postscript printers (on my Amiga 1000, serial #27) and while the language HP lasers used - HPGL seemed nice, Postscript seemed scary and complex; but it was obviously the one true way. Anything looking that much like FORTH had to be the answer.

    So I bought the red book. I bought the blue book. I looked for the green book. I cultivated the Reid brothers as friends. I read comp.lang.postscipt. I imaged film at 1250 and then 2450 dpi. I typeset a book on my amiga that actually got printed. I became a barely competant PS hacker. I was ready for the postscript revolution!

    Wake me up when it happens. Until then I have to put a gray border around some assholes webpage because his accountant wants it...
    dup showpage
    this, bitch.

    To comment on the original topic, I was an Assembly progammmer from 70 to about 93 and I'm telling you people the problem with code bloat is C++.

    Go back to C and check to see if it generated nice code and you can fit things on floppies again.

    I'm a contract programming whore but you can't pay me to use C++. I'd sooner do COBOL.

    Now, the interesting thing is there were TWO languages to come out of Bell Labs after C. C++ was only one of them, but it's creater had a Cerfian sense of self promotion and the language was popularized much to our collective dismay.

    Jim Fleming aquired the rights to the other language, it's called C@+ and pronounced "cat".

    A C@+ compiler written in C+@, fits on a floppy. I have one here. It's what we should be using if you want to use anything other than C.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?