Yet another Hacker News

On Binary Translation and Its Consequences

16 points matt_d 2 days ago 3 comments

functionmouse 47 minutes ago | parent

> Consumers in the PC segment expect high performance across a wide range of applications

It seems there is a persistent rift between what hardware designers think users want and what users are asking for, only recently being addressed by major OEMs with products such as the MacBook Neo.

Nobody I personally know wants a faster CPU; they want competent, faster, native feeling software and more power efficient hardware. CPUs have been plenty fast for at least a decade now, for anything the majority of users and even gamers are doing. I'm playing through the new and notoriously demanding LEGO Batman game on an RTX 2080 and an i7-4790k, a CPU from 2013 that even the base M1 easily beats. The game runs fine. Most people I am confident do not need better than the M1.

aleph_minus_one 34 minutes ago | parent

> It seems there is a persistent rift between what hardware designers think users want and what users are asking for

> Nobody I personally know wants a faster CPU; they want competent, faster, native feeling software and more power efficient hardware.

I think you miss the point: what you claim that users want is not something that hardware designers have a lot of influence on (except for the aspect that the IC should be (more) power-efficient): these are rather problems that software developers are there to solve. So, hardware designers are simply the wrong persons to ask if you have such wishes.

layer8 20 minutes ago | parent

That’s right, but power efficiency is an important factor, one of the main points where Intel is lagging behind ARM. And it’s also correct to point out that the main issue for end users is software, even if hardware designers can’t do much about it.