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Author: Subject: 25 years later 25000 times more value for the money
White Yeti
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[*] posted on 12-1-2013 at 08:45


An explanation would have been more useful than a broken link IMO.



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franklyn
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[*] posted on 14-5-2013 at 11:58


www.extremetech.com/extreme/155636-the-bitcoin-network-outpe...

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[*] posted on 14-5-2013 at 15:15


Quote:
I also have a working PC XT made of stuff i scavenged in 93 or so, cos i knew ppl would throw it out otherwise (they threw all the rest out). And do you know what the really tragic thing about it is. The 'poor' little 4.747MHz 640kB system loads up DOS 3.1 faster then my 2.8GHz loads up XP by a factor of about 10. Damn you microsoft



An example of a trend that has been observed since 1987 and is known as Wirths law:

"software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."




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woelen
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[*] posted on 14-5-2013 at 22:52


This is not a good comparison. A well-tuned system boots faster than a system, which has become loaded with tons of software and services. Windows XP unfortunately tends to become slower and slower over time. Newer Windows versions and also most Linux distributions boot much faster.

Another thing to keep in mind is functionality. Systems nowadays can do things which were unimaginable 20 years ago. Drivers and services, needed for being able to use this functionality also have to be started or loaded.




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12AX7
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[*] posted on 15-5-2013 at 18:09


I keep my XP laptop booted and use standby... bypasses the one problem.

I suppose that begs the question, how long until standby itself is bloated by excessive BIOS checks and functionality? As it stands, it's far from instantaneous: usually a few seconds. In principle, it should be doable within around 100ms, most of which is spent waiting for power supplies to stabilize (which have time constants in the 1-10ms range).

Can't say I've seen a computer do less than several minutes on conventional hardware and software (even with 'optimized' installs). Apparently SSDs do wonders, though.

Tim




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woelen
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[*] posted on 16-5-2013 at 01:56


I have a Shuttle XH61V (a very small barebone PC) with Core i3-3225 and a Samsung 840 PRO 256 GByte SSD and 8 GByte of DDR-1600 RAM. This is not exceptional hardware, actually it is fairly low end, except the SSD. I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on this and it boots in only 7 seconds (time from switch on until I can work on the system, i.e. the desktop is up-and-running and ready for use).

The SSD is very fast (appr. 100000 IOPs per second for read and 90000 IOPs for write, transfer rate 530 MByte/s). This makes a huge difference with normal harddisks.




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franklyn
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[*] posted on 28-5-2013 at 22:01


www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/17/quantum-computer
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franklyn
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[*] posted on 3-7-2013 at 20:08


www.extremetech.com/computing/160367-new-programming-languag...
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Eliteforum
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[*] posted on 4-7-2013 at 03:18


Meh, computers haven't got to the point where I'd like them to be at yet.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/atU1AcO.jpg" width="600"

Waiting on an order from Butterfly Labs..

<!-- bfesser_edit_tag -->[<a href="u2u.php?action=send&username=bfesser">bfesser</a>: reduced image size(s)]

[Edited on 7/16/13 by bfesser]




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[*] posted on 9-7-2014 at 01:10
A quiet revolution


It was noted May of last year that bitcoin mining exceeded the combined computational power of the world's top 500 supercomputers by 8 times
www.extremetech.com/extreme/155636-the-bitcoin-network-outpe...
By 6 months ago bitcoin mining was 256 times greater.
www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/11/28/global-bitcoin-c...

https://coinreport.net/mining-bitcoin-survival-fastest

Bitcoin mining rigs ( ASIC , Application Specific Integrated Circuit , devices )
www.spondoolies-tech.com/products/sp30-yukon-september-batch... ( 6 tera hash / sec )
www.best-miner.com ( 1 tera hash / sec )

www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg730ztgOzm1g10zm2g...
www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=14592&pag...
www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=17281&pag...

In the near term and likely for the foreseable future until the exhaustive ending of the mining protocal , the purchase of dedicated machines for several thousand dollars which consume the power of a large airconditioner and can do nothing else , will contribute only additively as the difficulty of mining grows faster than the technological ability to scale ever greater computation. With demand exceeding creation , bitcoin can only increase in value.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CjldZLXiAU


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[*] posted on 9-7-2014 at 05:57


Quote: Originally posted by woelen  
I have a Shuttle XH61V (a very small barebone PC) with Core i3-3225 and a Samsung 840 PRO 256 GByte SSD and 8 GByte of DDR-1600 RAM. This is not exceptional hardware, actually it is fairly low end, except the SSD.

I wouldn't call that low-end. My parents still run windows ME.

My personal rig is pretty good-

Core i5 (haswell) @ 3.40 GHz
16GB DDR3 2400 RAM
256 GB Samsung EVO SSD
2TB SATA 3 HDD
EVGA GTX 760 w/ 4GB VRAM
64 bit Win7 Pro

This thing absolutely smokes every game I own. It can run a minecraft server where I have told 5 or 6 people to deliberately attempt crashing it by placing thousands of blocks of TNT and blowing them up... all their clients crash, and my client AND server console stay running on the same computer. I do have a game (Planetary Annihilation) that can hover at 9GB RAM at times, but it is in beta and probably has yet to be optimized.

And yes, I remember upgrading my first PC to a 5.25 GB HDD back in 1998. Now my phone has a removable 32GB microSD flash chip the size of my baby fingernail, which cost about $35.




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[*] posted on 13-7-2014 at 21:28
They're here, Bitcoin ATM's


http://ktla.com/2014/07/07/hands-on-with-one-of-the-first-bi...
http://thetechreport.tv/2014/07/07/bringing-digital-currency...
www.digitaltransactions.net/news/story/How-a-Digitally-Minde...

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[*] posted on 2-7-2015 at 13:12


Some years ago I bought a 2 GB USB thumbdrive for $ 85

This now provides 100 X the space for just 3 X the price.

http://thehackernews.com/2015/06/200gb-microsd-card.html

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[*] posted on 6-7-2015 at 10:15


All "Technology" is driven by Moore's law, which has been advancing like
clockwork for 50 years!

"The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years."
G. Moore, 1965

Production is now starting on designs with 14nm feature sizes. 7nm devices are under development. These are still being printed with UV light with a wavelength of 193nm. Over the past few years there has been a shift from planar MOS devices to fin shaped MOS devices which offer higher transconductance with lower leakage. This has allowed Moore's law to continue but greatly complicated the design and fabrication process.

http://www.techdesignforums.com/practice/technique/advanced-...
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[*] posted on 26-7-2015 at 23:33


Quote: Originally posted by gregxy  
All "Technology" is driven by Moore's law, which has been advancing like clockwork for 50 years!

I'm not so sure about this. In 2011 the samsung galaxy s2 came out with a 1.2GHz processor. So according to moors law a top of the line phone in 2015 should be 2^4 = 16 times faster, or ~19.2GHz. Now obviously this isn't even remotely close to being the case - the galaxy s6 edge clocks in at 2.1GHz, not even double the s2.

I understand that in the smartphone market power usage is also a big factor, but still. It seems like Moore's law stopped quite a while ago.

[Edited on 27-7-2015 by Oscilllator]
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[*] posted on 27-7-2015 at 00:11


There is much more to CPU performance than clock speed. The number of cores for instance, and as you said there is the question of power consumption. Reducing the power consumption in half counts as a doubling of performance.

One should also understand that Moore's Law is empirical in nature, and to a great extent a self-fulfilling prophecy. It has turned into an industry-wide goal as everybody assumes that their competitors will achieve similar growth.

[Edited on 27-7-15 by Fulmen]




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[*] posted on 27-7-2015 at 09:10


Quote: Originally posted by Oscilllator  
Quote: Originally posted by gregxy  
All "Technology" is driven by Moore's law, which has been advancing like clockwork for 50 years!

I'm not so sure about this. In 2011 the samsung galaxy s2 came out with a 1.2GHz processor. So according to moors law a top of the line phone in 2015 should be 2^4 = 16 times faster, or ~19.2GHz. Now obviously this isn't even remotely close to being the case - the galaxy s6 edge clocks in at 2.1GHz, not even double the s2....


gregxy helpfully provides Moore's actual law, as formulated originally by Moore himself, not the many paraphrases or corollaries derived from it. Moore does not mention clock-speeds at all, only component costs. And that 'law' stays on track, more or less, (it has slowed down a bit from the mid 1960s, but the trend has remained steady).

As Fulmen points out there are more ways of increasing processing power than the misleading one-dimensionsal "clock speed" (some may remember the PowerPC vs Wintel marketing war in the 1990s, when PowerPC chips that did more work per cycle were at a disadvantage to the nominally faster but actually slower Intel chips).

Since raw clock speeds have flattened pipelining and hyperthreading have shoved more processing into each clock cycle, and of course we also get multiple cores on a single chip.

And as Fulmen also pointed out, the amount of computation per watt becomes increasingly important. We can only get "brain equivalent" computers by drastically lowering the power consumption per operation.

It is helpful to consider the operating characteristics of what remains the most powerful processing system we have: the human brain. Its "clock speed" is extremely slow, well below 1 kps, but is massively parallel, and extremely power efficient.

Our artificial computation technologies have an immense speed advantage, but have to evolve in the same direction before they can compete with natural neural networks.
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[*] posted on 17-11-2015 at 19:12
Corner the market in bitcoin


www.pcworld.com/article/3005414/computers/intel-plugs-72-cor...



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[*] posted on 17-11-2015 at 19:34


2 years and I still don't know Eliteforum. Is this what one uses for bitcoin mining?

atU1AcO.jpg - 383kB

Over the years I have used a pick and shovel to mine Gold, Silver, Uranium, even diamonds. However none of it was near as fun as it looks like you are having in this room.




"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" Richard Feynman
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[*] posted on 9-12-2015 at 08:28
They're here


http://gizmodo.com/google-claims-to-have-proved-that-its-qua...

www.computerworld.com/article/3013102/high-performance-compu...

http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206




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