Today’s processors contain billions of heat-generating transistors in an ever shrinking space. The power budget might go from:
* 1000 watts on a specialized server
* 100 watts on desktops
* 30 watts on laptops
* 5 watts on tablets
* 1 or 2 watts on a phone
* 100 milliwatts on an embedded system
In 1998 I briefly worked for FiringSquad, a gaming website founded by Doom and Quake champion Thresh aka Dennis Fong and his brother Lyle. I can trace my long-standing interest in chairs and keyboards to some of the early, groundbreaking articles they wrote. Dennis and Lyle were great guys to
I was thrilled to discover that Santa Claus left a little unexpected present on my doorstep on Christmas Eve: the two Lenovo ThinkServers that I ordered for stackoverflow.com! They weren’t supposed to arrive until sometime next week.
I immediately began unboxing the servers with all the eagerness of
Given the rapid advance of Moore’s Law, when does it make sense to throw hardware at a programming problem? As a general rule, I’d say almost always.
Consider the average programmer salary here in the US:
You probably have several of these programmer guys or gals on staff.