At one point many years ago I realized that I was happy with approximately 486 CPU level performance. I wished at the time for a 486 built on Pentium fabs. Of course simply scaling down the size of an old CPU probably doesn’t work, but still, the energy performance trade-off is a valid one.
But then we figured out how to make software slow (all good and appropriate abstractions, I’m sure) and I find myself wishing for faster CPUs again.
I’ve often wondered if it is just that I’ve gotten impatient or if performance has actually not perceptionally improved much over the years.
This is why I like to visit the Living Computer Museum here in Seattle once in a while. It turns out that even very old systems feel snappy at some tasks even by today’s standards.
UI and interactive features are generally fast, but there’s no getting around the slowness of say rendering a fractal.
Kudos to you for this work and a fun and interesting website. It reminds me of the recent “This Old Lisp” posting.
Worth noting that an 80s computer would already draw the key you pressed on the screen, while the same keypress would still be bouncing around the transistors of a modern USB keyboard.
I think it depends on what you are trying to do: any kind of modeling and you wouldn't be happy with 66 mhz.
But for most people, they don't really have a computation problem, they have a communication/information problem, and I think computers could be made more effective in solving it.
But then we figured out how to make software slow (all good and appropriate abstractions, I’m sure) and I find myself wishing for faster CPUs again.
I’ve often wondered if it is just that I’ve gotten impatient or if performance has actually not perceptionally improved much over the years.
This is why I like to visit the Living Computer Museum here in Seattle once in a while. It turns out that even very old systems feel snappy at some tasks even by today’s standards.
UI and interactive features are generally fast, but there’s no getting around the slowness of say rendering a fractal.
Kudos to you for this work and a fun and interesting website. It reminds me of the recent “This Old Lisp” posting.