Re: Computer architects leaving Intel...

Stephen Fuld wrote:

On 9/2/2024 1:23 AM, Terje Mathisen wrote:

Stephen Fuld wrote:

On 8/31/2024 2:14 PM, MitchAlsup1 wrote:

On Sat, 31 Aug 2024 21:01:54 +0000, Bernd Linsel wrote:

You compare apples and peaches. Technical specifications for your
pressure vessel result from the physical abilities of the chosen
material, by keeping requirements as vessel border width, geometry etc.,
while compiler writers are free in their search for optimization tricks
that let them shine at SPEC benchmarks.

>
A pressure vessel may actually be able to contain 2× the pressure it
will be able to contain 20 after 20 years of service due to stress
and strain acting on the base materials.
>
Then there are 3 kinds of metals {grey, white, yellow} with different
responses to stress and induced strain. There is no analogy in code--
If there were perhaps we would have better code today...

>
Perhaps an analogy is code written in assembler, versus coed written in C versus code written in something like Ada or Rust.  Backing away now . . . :-)

>
IMNSHO, code written in asm is generally more safe than code written in C, because the author knows exactly what each line of code is going to do.
>
The problem is of course that it is harder to get 10x lines of correct asm than to get 1x lines of correct C.
>
BTW, I am also solidly in the grey hair group here, writing C code that is very low-level, using explicit local variables for any loop invariant, copying other stuff into temp vars in order to make it really obvious that they cannot alias any globals or input/output parameters.
>
Anyway, that is all mostly moot since I'm using Rust for this kind of programming now. :-)

 Can you talk about the advantages and disadvantages of Rust versus C?

Q&D programming is still far faster for me in C, but using Rust I don't have to worry about how well the compiler will be able to optimize my code, it is pretty much always close to speed of light since the entire aliasing issue goes away.
Rust also gets rid of the horrible external library/configure/cmake mess that kept me from successfully compiling the reference LAStools lidar code for nearly 10 years.
Using the Rust port I just tell cargo to add it to my project and that's it.
Terje
--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"