From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 47783138454 for ; Thu, 10 Sep 2015 18:24:06 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6EFEEE0931; Thu, 10 Sep 2015 18:23:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-wi0-f182.google.com (mail-wi0-f182.google.com [209.85.212.182]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 2843CE08FE for ; Thu, 10 Sep 2015 18:23:52 +0000 (UTC) Received: by wicgb1 with SMTP id gb1so35466505wic.1 for ; Thu, 10 Sep 2015 11:23:51 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:references:mime-version :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=+FD+VNwWaRkAiM/OlCvQ11CschvZEdhG5ERGEjI2I48=; b=UrFakNIwmRFiyG6vIyVDo4VBjiKvkNt67Arx1BkM0Y2oepXncxr9DOXttWoG6o6uY7 PaoTgXWn1h7GMJ19CMqSD9dGO3koIwzvtZUrQ2Q44k9YaKIImMMcbd5M6kG43DUImbX+ QjToS+/0294fqP9yt58kxfVpL7yUY7IeRMKdfyG4N+ueDOCkwF4pcCLuRrgi3SwcFgXy QiEpTPrpnUzQFYWW/rfHWAvNU1u3kXEGmkDUmBp3ZottgmnpoJ8p3nNqutjjQIHqHaow T1I//Sy5OGD6uTYSeOjRwDND9CVzpl4aNdJBMITbVesMT8OWMQ/Uubp/+4cULu68lSyb GwZA== X-Received: by 10.194.95.103 with SMTP id dj7mr73022272wjb.118.1441909431039; Thu, 10 Sep 2015 11:23:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cosmo ([178.214.192.160]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id lh11sm10572711wic.18.2015.09.10.11.23.47 for (version=SSLv3 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Thu, 10 Sep 2015 11:23:50 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <55f1cab6.abcdb40a.b7432.7b73@mx.google.com> Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2015 21:22:57 +0300 From: Gevisz To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: new computer : any advice ? In-Reply-To: References: <20150907195624.GC1081@ca.inter.net> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 010321db-3111-423c-a785-c7f7f1648aff X-Archives-Hash: 89c92a9ba116dcde14ddf78634ad9690 On Thu, 10 Sep 2015 12:20:39 +0000 (UTC) james wrote: > Fernando Rodriguez outlook.com> writes: > > > > albeit in it's infancy. Naturally it's going to take a while to > > > become mainstream useful; but that more like a year or 2, at most. > > > > The value I see on that technology for desktop computing is that we > > get the GPUs for what they're made (graphics processing) but their > > resources go unused by most applications, not in buying powerful > > GPUs for the purpose of offloading general purpose code, if that's > > the goal you're better off investing in more general purpose cores > > that are more suited for the task. It is true. > I think most folks when purchasing a workstation include a graphics > card on the list of items to include. So my suggestions where geared > towards informing folks about some of the new features of gcc that > may intice them to consider the graphics card resources in an > expanded vision of general resources for their workstation. > > > To trully take advantage of the GPU the actual algorithms need to be > > rewritten to use features like SIMD and other advanced parallelization > > features, most desktop workloads don't lend themselves for that kind > > of parallelization. And it is also true. > Not true if what openacc hopes to achived indeed does become a reality. Hopes almost never becomes a reality. > Currently, you are most correct. Absolutely correct. ... > > When folks buy new hardware, it is often a good time to look at what > is on the horizon for computers they use. I also considered "what is on the horizon" when bought a brand new ATI Radeon R4770 graphic card about 6 years ago for computing purposes. In half a year it was discovered that it has much worse performance than ATI guys hoped for and, to improve it, they have to rewrite their proprietary drive for this graphic card. Instead of doing it, they just shamelessly dropped the support of the parallel computing feature of this graphic card in all subsequent versions of their drive. And as far as I know, no open source drive have ever supported the parallel computing feature of this graphic card as well. So, it was just a waste of money. Even more: I almost never worked at my assembled almost 7 year-old 4-core AMD computer with this graphic card as for all other purposes I prefer to work at my 10 year-old 2-core AMD computer with a very cheap on-board video card. Just to avoid extra heating and aircraft noise produced by R4770. So, Rich Freeman was absolutely right when he wrote in reply to your words above that > If all you need today is a $30 graphics card, then you probably should > just spend $30. If you think that software will be able to use all > kinds of fancy features on a $300 graphics card in two years, you > should just spend $30 today, and then wait two years and buy the fancy > graphics card on clearance for $10. > It is pretty rare that it is a wise move to spend money today on > computer hardware that you don't have immediate plans to use.