horse@feddit.org 1 day ago
As someone not looking to spend a ton of money on new hardware any time soon: good. The longer it takes to release faster hardware, the longer current hardware stays viable. Games aren’t going to get more fun by slightly improving graphics anyway. The tech we have now is good enough.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 1 day ago
People don’t just use computers for gaming. If this continues people will struggle to do any meaningful work on their personal computes which is definitely not good. And I’m not talking about browsing facebook but about coding, doing research, editing videos and other useful shit.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
Scientific modeling and simulations
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 hours ago
But wait! They can pay for remote computing time for a fraction of the cost! Each month. Forever.
I fully expect personal computers to be phased out in favor of a remote-access, subscription model. AI popping would leave these big data centers with massive computational power available for use, plus it’s the easiest way to track literally everything you do on your system.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 18 hours ago
And ban undesired activities. “We see you’re building app to track ICE agents. That’s illegal. You’re account was banned and all your data removed.”.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 hours ago
“Remain in your cube - The Freedom Force is en route to administer freedom reeducation. Please be sure to provide proof of medical insurance.”
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
Hopefully the AI bubble popping means they have to close data centers and liquidate hardware. Dirt-cheap aftermarket servers would be good for the fediverse.
obbeel@lemmy.eco.br 21 hours ago
Remote computing is very expensive. It’s just the gated (owned by companies) LLMs that are cheap for the final consumer. Training a 2b LLM on remote compute will cost thousands of dollars if you try to.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
2B is nothing, even 7B is tiny. Commercial API-based LLMs are like 130-200 billion parameters.
I mean yeah, training a 7B LLM from scratch on consumer-grade hardware could take weeks or months, and run up an enormous electric bill. With a decent GPU and enough VRAM you could probably shorten that to days or weeks, and you might want to power it on solar panels.
But I haven’t calculated what it would take to do on rented compute.
Jrockwar@feddit.uk 20 hours ago
This is true but at the current computer prices, nowhere near as bad as it sounds. I spend £100/year or thereabouts for GeForce Now, and
If you have a life and can’t play any more than 25 hours a week, the value proposition right now is great - there’s no viable alternative that allows you to keep playing AAA games for the equivalent of £100/year.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 hours ago
Fuck, you almost sold me on GeForce Now. Owning is still a better value proposition for me because I get my games at… steep discounts.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
balsoft@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
You can write code just fine on 20 or even 30 year old hardware. Basically if it runs Linux, chances are it can also run vim and compile code. If you spring for 10 year old hardware, you can even get an LSP + coc or helix, for error highlighting and goto definition and code actions. And you definitely don’t need a GPU for it (unless you’re doing something GPU-specific of course).
Editing 720p videos (which, if you encode with a high enough bitrate, still looks alright) can be done on 10-15 year old hardware.
Research is where it gets complicated. It does indeed often require a lot of computing power to do modern computational research. But for some simpler stuff - especially outside STEM - you can sometimes get away with a LibreOffice spreadsheet on an old Dell or something.
From the looks of it we will have to get used to doing more with less when it comes to computers. And TBH I’m all for it. I just hope that either my job won’t require compiling a lot more stuff, or they provide me with a modern machine at their expense.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 15 hours ago
Dude, I’m coding every day and I know what hardware requirements I have. You can write some code slowly on a potato but a lot of software development requires tons of RAM and powerful CPU. Linus Torvalds is using Threadripper 9960X for a reason.
balsoft@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
It’s nicer to develop anything on a beefy machine, I was rocking a 7950X until recently. The compile times are a huge boon, and for some modern bloated bullshit (looking at you, Android) you definitely need a beefy machine to build it in a realistic timeframe.
However, we can totally solve a lot of real-world problems with old cheap crappy hardware, we just never wanted to because it was “cheaper” for some poor soul in China to build a new PC every year than for a developer to spend an extra week thinking about efficiency. That appears to be changing now, especially if your code will be running on consumer hardware.
My dad used to “write” software for basic aerodynamic modelling on punchcards, on a mainframe that has about us much computing power as some modern microcontrollers. You wouldn’t even consider it a potato by today’s standards. I’m sure if we have our wits about us, we can optimize our stacks to compile code on a friggin 3.5GHz 10-core CPU (which are 10 year old now).
limer@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
I can code my stuff ok on an older model. I’m sure there are some stacks that need more resources, but I’m having a hard time thinking of which.
Admittedly, on a laptop that is 20+ years old, I cannot surf the web AND run docker at the same time
ripcord@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I’m not running fucking vim for software development
balsoft@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Honestly it’s fine. LSPs are nice but you don’t need them per se. A combination of tmux, entr, a fast incremental compiler, grep, and proper documentation can get you a long way there.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Excel users devestated.