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Hardware & Usage

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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hihashi
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Hardware & Usage

#1 Post by hihashi »

I thought about posting this in "Hardware", while I thought the topic more about apprising people about a serious & valid argument so to maybe facilitate what's more reasonable amidst the Technological Industry.

Are you Astrophysicists? Are you Biologists? Are you Chemists? Etc.?

Term of "Obsolete" actually is like to forced term of "Unpopular".
Who are the Technological Systems for?

Reference the Pentium i5 Processors, for an example. They have a 12 thread processor, essentially like a 12 Core Processor, & the boards can mount up to 64GB of RAM, far exceeding the usage requirements & necessities of 80% of the Global human population of Computer Users?
If you understand that, then there's not a point in moot argument that advocates 64 Bit only Hardware Specs, not at all. Do you understand THAT?

Reference the "New & Improved Computer Case Design" that has the Power Supply mounted at the bottom of the Case. I think that "Heat Rises" actually is a 5th Grade Science lesson, so "They done gradiated the 5th Grade" is some sort of mystery of a joke.

I would think that intelligent people would advocate 32 Bit System Compatibility being maintained at the mere clue that, there's not a valid necessity to hardware & software being merely 64 Bit, not actually. It's like to watch trite argumentation run the Technological Industry off the edge of a cliff. There's not even a goal about 64 Bit usage becoming a necessity for a majority of Computer Users, not at all.

Your own posted thoughts about these things actually are welcome.
Thanks for reading & considering these arguments.
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#2 Post by sunrat »

Here is my thought on your post - it belongs in Offtopic. Moved.
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#3 Post by CwF »

hihashi wrote: 2022-06-19 22:23 far exceeding the usage requirements & necessities of 80% of the Global human population of Computer Users?
Actually 98%.
So flip it. Should there be a special task force to serve the 2% of need? They are likely the ones paying and pushing the development. Maybe the 98% should just benefit from the top.

This is the way it works in most things, not just computers. Dare I say trickle down is actually a real thing.

Maybe your young enough to not remember early audio hype on 16, 18, 20 bit processing, or the 1bit by bit...It's all marketing. In computers, 8 bit could still serve us, but in many many many more steps. 'Thunking' is expensive. Could your distaste for the abandonment of perfectly good 32 bit hardware be applied to the former 16 bit system...it could. I'm pretty sure NASA still has 486's in service.

I once said "33Mhz is really all we need" I was wrong.

More important than the overkill hardware we're 'forced' to use, is the reality that high level programming has taken over. It's fat, lazy, and needs the overkill to work well.

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Re: Hardware & Usage

#4 Post by NorthEast »

32 bit has the "year 2038 problem".

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Re: Hardware & Usage

#5 Post by hihashi »

Well, it's been a couple of years since the Linux distribution developers actually were forced to cope with a Technological Industry that are not manufacturing 32 Bit Compatible hardware anymore, not actually. Now that the Linux peeps coped with that situation & as well followed suit with 64 Bit only development, I'm thinking that there's still a really valid point about maintained 32 Bit Compatibility, when considering the point honestly.
As well, what really likely harasses the minds of intelligent people about 64 Bit only was the seeming unanimous & abrupt absolute decision about hardware that really does far exceed the needs of a majority of users. "Why did they do that?"

I'm thinking that, perhaps it's like the film titled "Transcendence", & a bunch of wide-eyed chimpanzee wanna-be chump American Government employees saw something that scared them, & their reaction actually was to wheel & deal with the hardware manufacturers & try & get the industry to 64 Bit only.
I'm certain that there are citable documented evidences that somebody whom made what they called a "Technological Intelligent Species" as well publicly proposed a "Good Society" plan outline, & argued about what's truly "Legal" within a contrast to what's actually "Criminal", & it seems plausible that actually is the sort of thing that potentially scared a bunch of American Government employees & it's as well potential that they implicitly suggested "start over with 64 bit, only".

It could actually help to take a realistic look at "Why did they do that?" with a reasonable suggestion, inclusive of reasonable plausible evidence, just to ease the levels of irritation of frustration that Programmers actually have shown, implicitly, about coping with a 64 Bit only situation.

It's redundant to actually point out that, my own slews of arguments about reasons to maintain 32 Bit Compatibility would likely, based upon observations about others irrational & ill-tempered attempts to simply not listen nor tolerate suggestions that protagonize 32 Bit Compatibility being maintained, not actually, might serve for variably interesting conjecture to consider, whilst there are still potential solutions that various reasonable people might be in search of.
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#6 Post by arochester »

"14 Linux Distributions You Can Rely on for Your Ancient 32-bit Computer" - https://itsfoss.com/32-bit-linux-distributions/

Perhaps this discussion should include the direction of Microsoft Windows...

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Re: Hardware & Usage

#7 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

hihashi wrote: 2022-06-19 22:23 Reference the Pentium i5 Processors, for an example. They have a 12 thread processor, essentially like a 12 Core Processor, & the boards can mount up to 64GB of RAM, far exceeding the usage requirements & necessities of 80% of the Global human population of Computer Users?
Actually, I just can't wait to see 1024-core CPUs with 32 memory controllers (or better) - that would solve 2 essential problems that we have today:
1. Both OpenCL and CUDA would have become useless (especially CUDA) -> BOLT is the future ;)
2. Both AMD and NVidia would have to stop terrorizing world of free software by intentionally limiting the HW support -> with such big number of cores it would be easy to beat GFX shaders (which have very limited functionality)
hihashi wrote: 2022-06-19 22:23 Reference the "New & Improved Computer Case Design" that has the Power Supply mounted at the bottom of the Case. I think that "Heat Rises" actually is a 5th Grade Science lesson, so "They done gradiated the 5th Grade" is some sort of mystery of a joke.
You are wrong - in such designs the PSU has its own air inlet and outlet - so it operates at much lower temps -> higher reliability, less noise.
CwF wrote: 2022-06-19 22:59 More important than the overkill hardware we're 'forced' to use, is the reality that high level programming has taken over. It's fat, lazy, and needs the overkill to work well.
I'd say that greed (ok - cost optimization) leads to unavoidable (and possibly irreversible) regression in the long run.
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#8 Post by steve_v »

arochester wrote: 2022-06-20 15:20"14 Linux Distributions You Can Rely on for Your Ancient 32-bit Computer" - https://itsfoss.com/32-bit-linux-distributions/
Sadly none reliable enough for my i586/128MB or i486/64MB systems, apparently. Nevermind 32bit, I want real i386 support back.
LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: 2022-06-20 15:33in such designs the PSU has its own air inlet and outlet
I have a case on my floor right now that gets this completely wrong, i.e. PSU at the bottom with no bottom intake, but case manufacturers did figure it out fairly quickly.
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#9 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

steve_v wrote: 2022-06-21 06:04
LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: 2022-06-20 15:33in such designs the PSU has its own air inlet and outlet
I have a case on my floor right now that gets this completely wrong, i.e. PSU at the bottom with no bottom intake, but case manufacturers did figure it out fairly quickly.
Well of course there were broken designs, but the key concept is to allow the PSU to suck cool air from the bottom part of the PC case and exhaust it directly outside. Moreover, all/most of such cases have separate chamber for the PSU which improves this idea even more.
Anyway, this technology is very old and well tested - and today it's de facto standard.

PS. My first PC case with bottom PSU mount was Antec P180 - bought ~16 years ago, and it still works well (single problem: no USB3.0 ports on front panel)
https://silentpcreview.com/antec-p180-a-visual-tour/ ;)
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#10 Post by Onsemeliot »

While I agree that it seems wasteful to go with much less optimized code these days I also understand the economy of scale. It is just much less work to carry on with only one design and to go with the most potent available seems sensible in general. Especially if it only gets financially reasonable when big quantities are produced. I don't really get why exactly 32 bit is your hall mark. As CwF wrote, 16 bit might work just as well for most users. And besides this seems to be a mute argument anyway because you can always come up with the argument that everything worked already even when X was not yet available. Progress is most of the time not about necessity but about possibility. We usually do what we can. Not what might be sensible to do. This has many dire consequences. The race to 64 bit is one of the least worrying to me. And more powerful computers bring not only wastefulness but obvious advantages too.

In fact I fear when we run out of old pre-IME devices (produced until about 2008). Then it will get hard to use a fully free system where not even the BIOS/UEFI is proprietary. There seems to be no similarly freedom friendly powerful enough hardware in sight right now.

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Re: Hardware & Usage

#11 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

Onsemeliot wrote: 2022-06-27 06:50 While I agree that it seems wasteful to go with much less optimized code these days I also understand the economy of scale. It is just much less work to carry on with only one design and to go with the most potent available seems sensible in general.
Yes, it is about the economy of scale, but in a different way (IMO):
1. High level languages allows to reduce the cost becuse cheaper programmers can be used, and foremost they are easily replaceable (they don't have to know how the computer works or how to build data structures)
2. The customers are covering the costs of such buggy, slow and bloated software - an average John Doe probably won't notice that his PC is consuming 50% more power than it should, and that his 4-core CPU in a smartphone is no longer sufficient for even most basic tasks (buy a 6-core smartphone! :lol: )

Now take only 1'000'000'000 of such average J.Does, multiply this number by only 50 Watts of wasted energy per day -> this gives 50 Gigawatts per day - this is where the costs are hidden (and those are very optimistic calculations)

Now take only 1'000'000 of servers, multiply this number by Megawatts of wasted energy every single day, mostly because of Java (*)

... and of course, You can tell Your clients that They have to replace the hardware to meet "latest & greatest" software requirements.

Cost reduction on the developer side increases the costs on the client side - few times at least, and up to several millions times - when it comes to business software.

This is the truth of "economy at a scale" - it's a pile of bullshits.

(*) Almost all servers in the world are www servers and webpages and/or web applications have catastrophically low performance_per_watt factor - typically tens of thousands times lower than for locally executed compiled code of "classic" applications.
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#12 Post by CwF »

LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: 2022-06-27 20:09 This is the truth of "economy at a scale" - it's a pile of bullshits.
I usually drop the economy modifier, but scale is a vital factor in nature, and everything underneath it.

Scale should be explored answering any unknown. Often scale is responsible for 2 incompatible truths both being true. Scale is it's own subject, I study.

As a fabricator and specialized mechanic the subject came up daily. The labor alone of creating something can easily be more costly than a production piece. Modifying a production piece often cost more than the piece itself. It should be common knowledge. Your own example of simple minded disposable programmers itself is an example of scale.

Often it is a dependency. How about $1158 to overnight a part. A week might have cost $200 to ship, only to lose tens of thousands in the meantime. Scale.

An odd point of scale and the subject here; back in the day an industrial ISA backplane all decked out might have been 50k. What dwarfs that what the software development. In cases where that software still works, preserving that investment may need a new 'ancient' part every so often. Surprise surprise, the modern computer is a fraction of the original cost. Scale says nobody uses ISA so it should be more expensive. Scale also says manufacturing capacity has grown to make small runs downright cheap. Old tech can be built cheap since the original dev work is done, maybe even royalty free.

Scale is real
Trickle down is real
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#13 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

CwF wrote: 2022-06-28 00:31 Surprise surprise, the modern computer is a fraction of the original cost.
IMO faster computers should be used to do more work in a given period of time or to do the same work faster - and not to allow software companies to hire code monkeys.

The third option means that the costs of software development are passed to clients, causing huge global losses - both if form of wasted energy and because tons of useless electronic devices are landing in trash cans.
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Re: Hardware & Usage

#14 Post by CwF »

LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: 2022-06-28 17:08 IMO faster computers should be used to do more work in a given period of time or to do the same work faster
Sure.
Part of my examples point is few industrial processes are processor limited. While a niche in the larger picture, an example of cost sensitive conservatism. Old stuff can have a place.
Another current underneath supporting modern equipment is power efficiency.
Yet people still vote for lazy liberal advancements with their wallets. Through that 'economy of scale' bloat is outright promoted. Violation at scale pays, apologies are free.

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Re: Hardware & Usage

#15 Post by Onsemeliot »

LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: 2022-06-27 20:09 Yes, it is about the economy of scale, but in a different way
I agree with you. But I don't see it as either the aspects I described are accurate or yours, but both.

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Re: Hardware & Usage

#16 Post by filliphey »

hihashi wrote: 2022-06-20 13:32 Well, it's been a couple of years since the Linux distribution developers actually were forced to cope with a Technological Industry that are not manufacturing 32 Bit Compatible hardware anymore, not actually. Now that the Linux peeps coped with that situation & as well followed suit with 64 Bit only development, I'm thinking that there's still a really valid point about maintained 32 Bit Compatibility, when considering the point honestly.
As well, what really likely harasses the minds of intelligent people about 64 Bit only was the seeming unanimous & abrupt absolute decision about hardware that really does far exceed the needs of a majority of users. "Why did they do that?"

I'm thinking that, perhaps it's like the film titled "Transcendence", & a bunch of wide-eyed chimpanzee wanna-be chump American Government employees saw something that scared them, & their reaction actually was to wheel & deal with the hardware manufacturers & try & get the industry to 64 Bit only.
I'm certain that there are citable documented evidences that somebody whom made what they called a "Technological Intelligent Species" as well publicly proposed a "Good Society" plan outline, & argued about what's truly "Legal" within a contrast to what's actually "Criminal", & it seems plausible that actually is the sort of thing that potentially scared a bunch of American Government employees & it's as well potential that they implicitly suggested "start over with 64 bit, only".

It could actually help to take a realistic look at "Why did they do that?" with a reasonable suggestion, inclusive of reasonable plausible evidence, just to ease the levels of irritation of frustration that Programmers actually have shown, implicitly, about coping with a 64 Bit only situation.

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Time is kept as a 64-bit value that represents the number of 100-nanosecond intervals since January 1, 1601 (UTC). This is true even for versions of Windows for 32-bit processors. A roll-over of this 64-bit value will not occur before the year 30,827 A.D. ReactOS will be able to operate "in the year 2525, if man is still alive; if woman can survive..."

However, some applications that are run under Windows might use their own method of time keeping instead of the Windows time keeping functions. Some file systems cannot store file time (e.g., creation date, date last accessed, or date modified) with values as large as Windows can. Those applications and file systems might be vulnerable to something like the Year 2038 Problem.
Last edited by filliphey on 2023-01-19 09:59, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Hardware & Usage

#17 Post by kent_dorfman766 »

As an embedded guy I've become acutely aware that it seems the CPU designers set a price point and then cram whatever features will fit in that level of system, rather than provide a vast array of systems of differing scale. I either end up spending bookoo bucks for a processor that will run at 5% utilization, or the bean counters make me go cheap and only let me buy something that will constantly be pegged at 95%+ utilization.

Sure, FPGA fabric can help with these custom design problems, but try finding competent VHDL programmers for custom IP core design. I double-dog-dare-you.

But I digres because linux becomes less and less suitable for embedded apps as time goes by.

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Re: Hardware & Usage

#18 Post by canci »

BTW, I remember having the same discussion when I moved from an Amiga 1200 to a PC. On the one hand, it was a tremendous leap to suddenly have a 20x faster CPU running 3D accelerated graphics from just 2D. On the other, I was baffled how an Amiga 500 could run a game at just half a MB of RAM, but somehow DOS needed 8 MB for the same game with equal graphics. That was the first in a huge line of instances where I've noticed that KISS principles aren't a factor in most development, especially when it's proprietary.
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