September 11, 2009 at 10:16 am
Nice question Steve.
At one point in my career, I would look forward to any innovation. I like building the box, installing the software, programming, modifying the ERP. However, (*sigh*) reality sets in and I have a jaded response:
Because of SOX regulations, I don't have access to the system side any more or to making those decisions. DBA for me means I have permission to do back-ups, monitor, SQL 'fixes' (with signed form)and some programming (more signed forms). In other words, it's not what I get paid for, that's someone else's job.
September 11, 2009 at 10:21 am
As I've got older, I've found myself viewing any aspect of the technology more and more as a commodity and less and less as a thing of interest in itself. To me, a good piece of software is one that meets my customers' (and, therefore, my) needs. To me, a piece of hardware is irrelevant unless it's insufficient for aforementioned "good" software, at which point it's just an obstacle.
I must admit that, for someone whose chosen field is IT, I'm remarkably technophobic. Now where's that floppy disc.....:Whistling:
Semper in excretia, suus solum profundum variat
September 11, 2009 at 11:52 am
I think perceived perfomance level plateued several years ago and has begun to fall.
Perhaps it is a bit like going from a pool table to a snooker table. Larger table (quad processors), more balls (transistors), more felt (cache & memory), but the game seems to go a whole lot slower.
I am certain this is the case for user systems, more processors just means more crap running in the background now.
For servers I'm not sure that the operating systems and SQL server code will be able to really make use of all the power without a complete new rewrite from scratch.
I suspect buried in the bowels of some of this code are artifacts from DOS 1.0 or CP/M.
I often wonder how much of the actual brute force processing power is lost now due to the overhead required to manage multiple processors and multiple threads.
September 11, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I was going to say that I wasn't sure my vote counted, since I play a dual role of software developer and dba, and I only do the dba until the system ships to the customer with our software solution fully installed. But I see from other posts, that there's a wide range of answers. So, I'll answer with all my various hats.
As the DBA, I honestly couldn't care less.
As the software developer, I care a great deal because of the added complexity this adds. Most of that is hidden in the SQL Server, but when you do things like Inter-Process Communications or shared memory blocks (we do both), it creates all new concerns and issues. Anyone that migrated up from Visual Studio 2003 will be familiar with a large issue in the cross-threading of GUI applications.
As a gamer, oddly, I don't care nearly as much about the number of processors as I do the speed, because most games still don't make much use of the extra cores. A couple excite me, but anything beyond four only stirs an interest in that I know I can now run Spybot and Ahoy without interrupting my games.
However, where I really get hold-my-breath-excited, is my hopes to build a new home server running X-windows at home. I can afford to invest a lot more into one computer and use the old ones for remote access, than I could afford to upgrade all of my home users. I can use the license of each of my slow home PCs to install their version of Windows inside of a virtual machine, and replace the existing OS with an X-Windows OS and use it as a dummy terminal. The end user doesn't see much difference, except that their machine is now much, much faster. Now that excites me.
September 11, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Some people can look at an ad for something like a dual core laptop and think Hey! it's dual core so it must be fast. Ignoring on chip cache size, bus speeds, CPU speed. That stuff does matter. Of course, as chips get faster, software bloat increases. Someone mentioned running VS on a 4 way and it could be slow. That is crazy. Next we will need Blue Gene to search on Google.
September 11, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I'm interested, but only because I think it's about time I replace my P4 PCs. The I7s are expensive, but when I read about the I5s, I started to think that they might be worth it.
September 11, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Since the processor names all became obfuscated as to what they really were, memory, bus speed and hard drive speeds and capacities are more important. Muliti cores for servers but even PCs's come with at least dual core. Price is also a factor much higher on the list than the processor.
I'm just waiting for the muliticores to trickle down to my cell phone so it can answer those annoying texts before I even have to read them. "No, any key is not a key...":-P
September 11, 2009 at 8:12 pm
As a performance-tuning consultant, I anxiously await the next revelation in CPU's, Memory, and the impending explosion of solid state storage devices... which will, of course be followed by the next wave of bloat-ware and performance problems. 😛
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
September 12, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Irrelevant since we are all going to end up in the Cloud 🙂
James Stover, McDBA
September 13, 2009 at 5:46 am
James Stover (9/12/2009)
Irrelevant since we are all going to end up in the Cloud 🙂
BWAA-HAA!! Guess I'm going to have to start hoarding computers. Between the "Eatr" project and the "Cloud", I'm really thinking "SkyNet". 😛
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
September 14, 2009 at 4:10 am
rboggess (9/11/2009)
However, where I really get hold-my-breath-excited, is my hopes to build a new home server running X-windows at home. I can afford to invest a lot more into one computer and use the old ones for remote access, than I could afford to upgrade all of my home users. I can use the license of each of my slow home PCs to install their version of Windows inside of a virtual machine, and replace the existing OS with an X-Windows OS and use it as a dummy terminal. The end user doesn't see much difference, except that their machine is now much, much faster. Now that excites me.
I'm trying to visualise your home user community and your function in it... and I think home Windows licences that come with the PC usually aren't transferable to other hardware, including even inside a virtual machine on the same hardware. It may even be mentioned specifically. There are modern Linux "distros" for limited hardware, though, so you could use that and maybe Wine. I am not aware of a great body of user or developer comment about how great Wine is (the software, not the drink). Likewise Mono... but then I haven't gone looking.
September 14, 2009 at 8:05 am
rja.carnegie (9/14/2009)
I'm trying to visualise your home user community and your function in it... and I think home Windows licences that come with the PC usually aren't transferable to other hardware, including even inside a virtual machine on the same hardware. It may even be mentioned specifically. There are modern Linux "distros" for limited hardware, though, so you could use that and maybe Wine. I am not aware of a great body of user or developer comment about how great Wine is (the software, not the drink). Likewise Mono... but then I haven't gone looking.
Nope. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/eula/home.mspx No such restrictions. In fact, this is basically how you run a virtual machine, even in the Windows VM. Now, whether or not their authentication will recognize it, is another story. I've never heard the details of the false positives they've experienced.
Of course, for a virtual machine, I'm not sure if it matters, since you've got a 30 day trail anyway, and I would kill the VM before then. That said, I guess you don't really need a licensed copy of Windows at all. Mind you, I haven't actually done this yet, or even tried. I was waiting for a motherboard that supported dual eight-core configurations. And as you may have learned, the difference between practice and theory are often quite at odds.
September 18, 2009 at 8:57 pm
It is amazing that you come with this thinking. i'm 35 year in the software development job and by reading your editorial (often meaningful, many thxtherefore) I realize that I have followed the same path for many reasons:
- the expected major breakthrough was automatic parallel compilers for distributed systems or multi-processors but as with AI maybe it was beyond our capabilities on the global scene (I still believe thay parallel computing is possible but should focus on repetitive tasks in interaction with the external world, by analogy with the brain. Actually I realized that unconciously computer science is imitating the way the brain works (while conscious attempt for AI forget that reality by rushing on intelligence before considering life, its sine qua nun precondition.
- software technology keeps us more and more buzy but according to me more by searching the truth behind the hype and by the fact that software development has never been understood by its consummers (even now we can hear that project manager are best computer science ignorant for being a good manager) than by real innovation (I ever consider that the switch to OO has not yet really, massively occured)
- fashion is the main motor of increasing computer powwer consumption; actualing waste has become the motor of our economy; GUI, RDBMS or Browser are becoming OS, XML is becoming a DBMS, etc so that no one dares to speak about new OS anymore but most applications are still lacking evolutionary capabilities. In other words, they are less motivations for looking after underlying technology evolution while our job of software developers keeps us more and more buzy for other things than software development.
I share thus your feeling in this matter ...untill a hype will hide "l'objet de nos désirs"!
thx for your triggering event.
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