News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to justify. Parent comment

Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by henrydark on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @02:14PM (#30432236)
As per the piece, open 128 documents on a 128 core machine, and you'll see the difference.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by netr0ute on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @02:35PM (#30432527)
How many people actually use a 128 core machine though? The absolute biggest AMD Threadripper you can get only has 64.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by kllrnohj on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @06:30PM (#30435358)
That seems like an awfully short sighted argument. Less than 20 years ago we were all using single-core CPUs. Now most of us have at least 6 cores if not more in a battery powered handheld device that we don't even expect to do much compute work on (aka, smartphones). And 8-16 cores w/ SMT are not an unusual consumer laptop/desktop configuration.

The articles suggestion that it's only a matter of time for 128+ core CPUs to be common, at least in the server space, is probably the least contentious argument it makes?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by netr0ute on Thursday February 24, 2022 @12:05AM (#30450512)
128 cores is only 2x 64 cores, and 64 cores is a whopping 4x what AMD's top dog desktop CPU offers, so if you have to go this far for exceptions to be slow, then maybe they don't matter for most users.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by kllrnohj on Thursday February 24, 2022 @11:38AM (#30456772)
Your math is a bit off, confusing threads & cores. 128 threads is only 4x of what AMD's top desktop CPU offers, and is what current AMD server CPUs offer in a single socket system. And over the past 20 years consumer CPUs have 32x'd their thread count. A 4x increase over the next 10+ years really doesn't seem all that far-fetched.

Also, the scaling problems show up far before 128 threads are used. The scaling issues start showing up at just 4-8 threads, depending on the error rate.

Also also, C++ is used in a hell of a lot more places than just consumer desktops. So the current limitations of consumer desktops is fully irrelevant anyway.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by nybble41 on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @03:01PM (#30432895)
> The absolute biggest AMD Threadripper you can get only has 64.

You can get a machine with dual 64-core AMD EPYC 7662 CPUs[0] for a total of 128 cores. It will cost you almost $20k, though—for the most basic configuration.

[0] https://bizon-tech.com/bizon-x6000.html#959:8714;960:4858;96...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by tneumann on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @03:08PM (#30432997)
A dual socket EPYC costs about 15K. You can rent some online for 400$ a month. This gives you 128 cores for a relatively low price.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by mcguire on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @02:56PM (#30432823)
No one needs more than 64 cores?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by henrydark on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @02:51PM (#30432764)
96 virtual cores is a popular choice on AWS, being cost effective in some industry scenarios. I'm certain the analysis of the piece applies
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Current hardware trends make C++ exceptions harder to jus... by jrockway on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @03:02PM (#30432913)
Those Threadrippers have two vCPUs per core, so you can definitely have 128 things that appear to proceed in parallel.
[ Parent | on HN ]