Re: tlug: Karl-Max has cool dreams [was: dual-pentium processors]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak@example.com> writes:

    >> Who needs to?  `M-! ps ax | wc' ==> `54 320 2233'
    >> 
    >> I've got 54 processes running,

    Manu> Yeah, 95% of them sleeping.  Won't help you much utilizing
    Manu> your CPUs.  A better measure is the CPU load of your machine
    Manu> (i.e., average number of processes in the ready-to-run
    Manu> queue).  I guess you are not really often above 1, 2, or
    Manu> maybe 3 processors.

Never, unless I'm running a compilation and cthugha at the same time,
but note the cost assumption I made: $/processor then = $/byte today.
Also, I'm running what is basically a glorified word processor.  I
don't use multimedia (especially not audio/video input), do image
processing, etc, etc.  But suppose it becomes cheap to put a processor 
on each of those tasks?

Also, there are lots of processor intensive tasks that don't get done
now because we don't have the technology, but will soon.  Voice
recognition, for example.  Will we find ways to use 64 microprocessors
at a time?  Well, how many microprocessors does the typical late-model
car have?

    Manu> For some applications, you can use many processors no
    Manu> question, but without a revolution in programming languages,
    Manu> compilers, and such it will be a few carefully selected and
    Manu> handcrafted pieces of software. (And the so-called
    Manu> `embracingly parallel problems' like computing a Mandelbrot
    Manu> set).  But maybe there will be a revolution :-)

How about the game of life?

Or page-at-a-glance OCR to give a practically important example.

Lots of neural network stuff (for which you usually don't need a
Pentium per node, I'll admit).

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