Examining the Claim That I/O Is No Longer the Bottleneck in Programming Tasks
By
benhoyt
Crisp on the outside, thoughtful on the inside. A keeper.
Summary
The article examines the claim that I/O is no longer the bottleneck in programming tasks like word frequency counting, challenging the common belief that I/O is the limiting factor. It references Ben Hoyt's blog post which argues that sequential read speeds have improved dramatically while CPU speeds have stagnated, making I/O less of a bottleneck than previously thought. The author tests this claim by measuring sequential read speeds (1.6 GB/s on cold cache, 12.8 GB/s on warm cache) and questions whether word frequency counting can actually achieve these speeds on a single thread, suggesting that CPU processing might now be the limiting factor rather than I/O.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledSequential read speed has come a long way, while CPU speed has stagnated.
I'm getting 1.6 GB/s sequential reads on a cold cache, and 12.8 GB/s on a warm cache (best of five).
But it should be possible to count word frequencies at a speed of 1.6 GB/s even on a single thread, right?
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