Off-Topic: The Machine

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> Taking it with a generous grain of salt is one thing, but outright
> rejecting it is a bit harsh. I understand that HP has actually
> demonstrated the Machine, so unless they faked the demo, the basic facts
> are probably more-or-less correct.

Like all benchmarks used in advertising, it's going to focus on what
the machine does well, regardless of how closely that parallels
real-world usage. Legit ones attempt to ensure that there's at least
some correlation, but even then, it's impossible to be totally fair.
So "more-or-less correct" may be true, but I still take *all* such
benchmarks with the aforementioned salt.

>> Also, mobile phones don't waste most of their power doing "calculating"
>> and "handling" terabytes of data, but the RF and display consumes the
>> most of power. Therefore, even if you could scale the CPU down your
>> phone would still not go 2-3 months on a single charge.
>
> Fair point.
>
> But given how much smart phones get used for playing games these days, I
> think the savings would still be considerable.

Plus, most of computing is just doing the same thing over and over
again. The improvements done to the CPU might well be able to be
applied, in a different form, to other parts of the device. Sure, the
screen has to emit light, which costs power; but if computation is
cheap enough, it might be possible to calculate exactly how much light
is falling on the screen, and back down the brightness automatically
when you move into shadow. Engineering is generally about trading one
resource for another, so gains in one area can result in gains in
others too.

Of course, it's always possible for beautiful engineering to be
destroyed by stupid politicking. But here's hoping.

ChrisA