multi-core software

Jon Harrop jon at ffconsultancy.com
Wed Jun 10 15:42:09 EDT 2009


Matthias Blume wrote:
> "Jeff M." <massung at gmail.com> writes:
>> But, assuming that your program works and does what it's supposed to,
>> I agree with Jon that performance needs to be right near the top of
>> the list of concerns. Why? Performance isn't about looking good as a
>> programmer, or having fun making a function run in 15 cycles instead
>> of 24, or coming up with some neat bit packing scheme so that your app
>> now only uses 20K instead of 200K. Performance is - pure and simple -
>> about one thing only: money.
> 
> Programmer time is vastly more expensive than CPU time, so the
> money argument often leads to slow ("low performance") solutions as long
> as they are "good enough" because developing a faster solution would
> mean spending more valuable programmer time at a cost that cannot
> be recovered over the life cycle of the product in question.

In the context of commercial software, the money to fund developers to
improve performance comes from the huge marketing budget because
performance is usually more about marketing than anything else.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u



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