Microsoft's top developers prefer old-school coding methods

[Nick Sabalausky]

"bearophile" <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com> wrote in message 
news:hf0976$v23$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Justin Johansson:
>> "I think we have maybe five to 10 years left [with Moore's Law]," he
>> said. "Optimizations will get very, very sexy again, when people realize
>> how we pay for abstractions."
>
> We'll see, but I don't believe that. We'll see. CPUs with 30 cores require 
> a different kind of optimizations.
>

First of all, when we get up around 30 cores (more or less), we'll be 
getting right back into the same problem we had a few years back with 
rediculous power consumption and heat generation. Only this time, there will 
be fewer things that can be done about it. But ignoring that...

Fast-forward to that day when there are 30-core CPUs, and grab three 
programs:

A. Something optimized for those 30-cores.
B. Something optimized with traditional techniques.
C. Something like Bazaar.

1. Certainly, A is going to run fastest...except perhaps if the user is 
simultaneously running five other programs that are also optimized for 30 
cores each...or if the user isn't running on a fancy top-of-the-line 30-core 
machine and is only getting by with a cost-effective 8 cores with is more 
than sufficient for their needs...in which cases B can quite realistically 
compete with A.

2. B is still going to kick the shit out of C.

3. Grab a fourth program, that has both trditional optimizations and 30-core 
optimizations, provided that they are both balanced in an intelligent way, 
and that'll probably beat them all, demonstrating that 30-core optimizations 
are be something to suppliment, not replace, traditional optimizations.