More radical ideas about gc and reference counting

[Manu via Digitalmars-d]

On 7 May 2014 08:07, Xavier Bigand via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> Le 06/05/2014 13:39, Paulo Pinto a écrit :
>>
> Android works well, I love my nexus, it proves to me that it's possible to
> create really smooth applications based completely on Java (not 100% of
> that) but if we compare the Nexus 5 to iPhone 4 :
> Memory : 2 GB RAM vs 512 MB RAM
> CPU : Quad-core 2.3 GHz Krait 400 vs 1 GHz Cortex-A8
> Battery : Li-Po 2300 mAh battery vs Li-Po 1420 mAh battery
>
> And compared to an iPhone 5s
> Memory : 2 GB RAM vs 1 GB RAM
> CPU : Quad-core 2.3 GHz Krait 400 vs Dual-core 1.3 GHz Cyclone
> Battery : Li-Po 2300 mAh battery vs Li-Po 1560 mAh battery
>
> It's maybe not really significant but the majority of Android devices that
> have acceptable performances have a lot of memory, a quad cores CPU and an
> heavy battery.
>
> So that cool Java can run smoothly but at which price? I think the margin of
> Apple produce is unbelievable.

Yeah, these are excellent points that I've tried and perhaps failed to
articulate properly in the past.
The amount of 'wasted' resources required to maintain a significant
surplus on Android devices is ridiculous, and that's why I separated
phones from other embedded systems. While phones can, and do, do this,
other embedded systems don't.
To say we need to leave half of the xbox/ps4 resources idle to soak up
intermittency is completely unworkable.

It's always important to remember too that the embedded market is by
far the largest software market in the world.