Ask YC: What would you do with 128 cores on your desktop?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242164

by iamelgringo • 18 years ago

4 8 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

This article: http://newteevee.com/2008/07/09/the-pirate-bay-wants-to-encrypt-the-entire-internet/

...got me thinking that perhaps encrypting everything coming in and out of our computers might start to use up 128 cores that we should have in the next decade or so.

What are applications that you can see occurring in 10 years that are impossible right now because we have a measly 2-4 cores on our desktops? What would you love to see?

iamelgringo• 18 years ago

I'll start.

Graphics rendering has been known to be embarrassingly parallel for decades. And, generally graphics rendering can absorb as many nodes as you throw at it. I'm sure that dedicated graphics processors are always going to be better at rendering than generic processors, but perhaps OS makers are going to be including a lot more eye candy in the OS once they can establish 128 cores as a minimum specification for their OS install.

Ray traced desktops? Icons with fur simulations or fluid dynamics?

jjersin• 18 years ago

This isn't a direct answer, but in 10 years I don't want to have a desktop. I want a cheap dumb terminal with a big screen, and I want all my apps and data in the cloud.

In the cloud, computers with tons of cores make a lot more sense.

tdoggette• 18 years ago

I'd probably browse the web and read news feeds. In addition, I'd watch video, program, play games, and use IRC.

I'd also set up scripts in the background to copy files from one HDD to another ad infinitum because I'd feel bad having all of those cores and not doing anything with them.

Tichy• 18 years ago

Artificial Life Simulations

volida• 18 years ago

what would you do with your personal spaceship?

many• 18 years ago

I would sell the beast and hire you.

gaius• 18 years ago

I would take eigenvectors of many matrices with many dozens of dimensions to advance my radical AI agenda through principal component analysis as a function of time.

I can do that right now of course, but not anywhere close to real time with practical datasets.

lbrandy• 18 years ago

As an employee at a face recognition company, I got endless uses for your 128 cores. Give me 128 cores on your machine and suddenly a whole lot of the "robust" media search algorithms become much more viable.

Ask YC: What would you do with 128 cores on your desktop?

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