It's also getting extremely hard to keep electrons properly corralled within microprocessors as the fabrication processes increasingly hit the limits of physics. Those physical and physics limits will naturally increase the emphasis on coding for efficiency. It's hard to predict precisely how hard (and where) those performance problems will bite, but the overall trends are clear. It's already very true in the mobile computing world where optimizing for power consumption is critically important and getting more important since battery technology isn't advancing as quickly as the industry would like.
I also agree with the opinions expressed about optimizing where it makes the most sense (or dollars, euro, yen....) and only there, in some priority order. Though I'd mostly disagree about that additional peak MSU. I think many of us have probably experienced the unnatural acts that some IT organizations go through to avoid consuming one more MSU -- as they wheel 500 more servers in the door in the attempt. It's beyond ridiculous and absurd. It depends to some extent on where you're starting, but the next peak MSU is often comparatively inexpensive in absolute terms and "always" less expensive than the previous one. It's roughly analogous to an airline flying its jet airplane one more minute per day. Yes, there's a bit more fuel consumed and (maybe) a marginally higher staffing cost and marginally more frequent maintenance. But that additional minute also yields more (in trips and passenger fares), and there are lots of fixed costs (airplanes, gates, most staff, insurance) already paid for. That airline analogy also works in the sense that if you hang onto a DC-9 or 727 too long you can quickly bankrupt your airline. If you grew up in a "hardware expensive" world, well, the world has changed profoundly. Even if you've still got DC-9 era chargebacks, it doesn't mean they represent reality. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples VCT Architect Executive (Based in Singapore) E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
