dual processor

[Paul Rubin]

Jorgen Grahn <jgrahn-nntq at algonet.se> writes:
> I feel the recent SMP hype (in general, and in Python) is a red herring. Why
> do I need that extra performance? What application would use it?

How many mhz does the computer you're using right now have?  When did
you buy it?  Did you buy it to replace a slower one?  If yes, you must
have wanted more performance.  Just about everyone wants more
performance.  That's why mhz keeps going up and people keep buying
faster and faster cpu's.

CPU makers seem to be running out of ways to increase mhz.  Their next
avenue to increasing performance is SMP, so they're going to do that
and people are going to buy those.  Just like other languages, Python
makes perfectly good use of increasing mhz, so it keeps up with them.
If the other languages also make good use of SMP and Python doesn't,
Python will fall back into obscurity.

> Am I prepared to pay the price (in bugs, lack of features, money,
> etc) for someone to implement this?  There's already a lot of
> performance lost in bloatware people use everyday; why are we not
> paying the much lower price for having that fixed with traditional
> code optimization?

That is needed too.  But obviously increased hardware speed has a lot
going for it.  That's why people keep buying faster computers.