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Re: CPU cycles DO NOT MATTER! (EXPLETIVE!)

by BrowserUk (Patriarch)
on Apr 17, 2008 at 13:06 UTC ( [id://681142]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to CPU cycles DO NOT MATTER!

So, all the money Google spent on eshewing RDBMSs and everything else that goes to making up the Google architecture was a waste of time because they could have just doubled their performance by spending another $250 million on another 80,000 servers?

Hm. I wonder what that would have done to their electricity bill?


Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
EXPLETIVE!

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Re^2: CPU cycles DO NOT MATTER! (EXPLETIVE!)
by dvryaboy (Sexton) on Apr 17, 2008 at 17:37 UTC
      Not everything is a map-reduce job.

      Of course it isn't. But how many 1000s of extra machines would they have required to do the what? 80%, 90%, 95%? of their total daily cpu cycle expenditure if they had used clustered RDBMSs for their core operational work?

      You obviously expend the greatest efforts optimising where it will do most good. Not everything you write.


      Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
      "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
      In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
Re^2: CPU cycles DO NOT MATTER! (EXPLETIVE!)
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Apr 17, 2008 at 13:21 UTC
    If they wrote their stuff in Perl, then I would say yes. But, the Google architecture is written in order to maximize CPU efficiency. In 20 years, even that will be moot. 10 years ago, what I'm saying would've been false. Right now, in Perl, CPU cycles almost always do not matter.

    My criteria for good software:
    1. Does it work?
    2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
      Right now, in Perl, CPU cycles almost always do not matter.

      In 1973, oil prices jumped from ~$3/barrel to $12/barrel. The worlds economy went into a downward spiral that would lasted ~7 years. Inflation was rampant throughout the world. Unemployment went through the roof in most Western Economies. Food prices rose at unprecedented rates.

      In 1980, oil prices jumped from $15/barrel to $40/barrel. The world's economies went into downward sprials.

      But still the world car industry, especially in the US, kept churning out 5 litre "shopping cars" return ~10 mpg. Imagine the savings in raw oil stocks if the lessons had been heeded and no new cars were produced from 1974 onwards, that used say, < 40mpg? How many billions of barrels of oil would that have saved?

      Today, oil prices have recently peaked at $115/barrel. The price of rice, wheat and other basic foodstuffs has tripled in some places. Bread, milk, rice and all the foodstuffs produced from them, including meat, are rising weekly--some daily. The worlds banks are suffering meltdown due to bad deptsdebts. Inflation is threatening. Unemployment rising.

      Some figures put the energy used by commercial computer and related equipment as 13% of the total energy consumption world wide. Wasted cycles == wasted energy. Both in the direct energy usage, and the indirect cost of dealing with the heat generated. Throwing hardware at performance problems without considering the possibility of optimisations (either better algorithms or better code), is exactly the same as building low-efficiency gas-guzzling car engines because they are, in the short term, "cheaper" to produce.

      The lessons of history are free to learn for those that will.


      Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
      "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
      In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

        The worlds banks are suffering meltdown due to bad depts.

        I know that "depts." is a typo, but it's such a wonderful one because of its surprising truth.

        <radiant.matrix>
        Ramblings and references
        The Code that can be seen is not the true Code
        I haven't found a problem yet that can't be solved by a well-placed trebuchet
        And when power prices make it more economical to optimize vs. throw hardware at it is when it will become cost-efficient to do so. Until then, the business loses money if it optimizes at every turn. As businesses only exist to make money, a money-losing business doesn't stay in business.

        My criteria for good software:
        1. Does it work?
        2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
Re^2: CPU cycles DO NOT MATTER! (EXPLETIVE!)
by jrockway (Acolyte) on Apr 20, 2008 at 02:28 UTC
    The reality is that most people aren't Google. Most people want to write an application that handles 10 users.

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