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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3224 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 10, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Why are phones getting so powerful?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apples-a17-pro-challenges-core-i9-13900k-ryzen-7950x-in-single-core-performance

The processor in the newest Iphone is vaguely comparable to the powerful, expensive CPU I bought for my PC this year! In multi-core processing mine is still far superior... but why do phones need such powerful processors? What are people doing on their phones that needs these cores? Phone games cater to the lowest common denominator with cheap, crappy phones. Are people seriously doing proper computing work on their phones?

Or are Iphone engineers just constantly trying to one-up themselves?

"What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away"

Having ultrapowerful processors, high-speed unlimited data plans, and expansive storage saves programmers from the horrors of optimization.

(As an aside, I've installed Linux on my Android phone. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but it should be a perfectly capable computer nonetheless.)

Combined with an average boot-time image of over 500MB for just the base Windows Vista code base, it seems clear that any system configuration that specifies less than 1GB of RAM is a non-starter with this version.

Today, systems with less than 4GB RAM are unworkable and 8 GB is just about the minimum... What a mess.

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