AVR Freaks

How many cores?

Who cares...

Back in the days of DOS, and with AVR's these days, one knows exactly what the processor is doing, and where it is spending its time.

These days, my main desktop / work machine has multiple cores.

However, when I'm running multiple programs simultaneously, it still seems that one core is getting its butt kicked, and the others aren't doing anything...

I clearly don't understand the inner workings of Win10, or of the various programs I run, but it seems to me that none of them know how to spin off a program or task to a new core that is just sitting there doing nothing.

Given that, at least as it appears to me, one core is doing the vast majority of the work, I still like a "fast" machine.

Just another thought for your consideration...

JC

... and if any of the ghosts eat you, we shall take it out back by the woodshed and it'll never be seen again.  S.

I build my own PCs.  I wouldn't use a store bought one.  The ones I'm using are 9 years old and working fine.  The cases, power supplies, fans and one of the hard drives are several years older than that.

They are cool and quiet and no dust bunnies either. 

my laptop (my main development machine) is now 7 years old - time for a new one.

the processor is a quad-core intel i5-3230: 2.6GHz "normal" speed, and 3.2GHz "boost" - performance-wise, it is fine.

So... why do you want a new one, especially if you're planning on having "the same RAM/SSD" ?

I have heard that the gen-10 ("Ice Lake"?) have significantly better "integrated graphics."

And then there is AMD...

I've sort-of divided laptops into "portable machines that you plug in" (with good performance) and "things that actually have a reasonable battery life and are light enough to carry around easily" (with less performance.)

Most people don't need a core i7 CPU.  My computers have core i5 CPUs that cost $220 each.  My motherboards cost $180.  I don't have a graphics card.  The graphics built into the CPU is just fine for me.   If you want 2 monitors you need a motherboard with 2 video ports.

I'm not very familiar with modern motherboards, but some of them have a slot, maybe it's called M.2, that allows you to plug in a memory card that's faster than the traditional SSD that emulates a hard drive and plugs in with a SATA cable.  I guess it uses memory like the SSD but is faster.

I'd suggest 16 GB of RAM or maybe more.  One of my computers only has 8 GB and that works fine.  I do keep an eye on memory usage.  Normally it's not a problem, but sometimes when I have many tabs open on my browser, the system goes bananas and uses up all the memory.   Especially Edge does this, but I've seen it happen with Firefox.  

By the way, have you tried the new Edge?  It uses chromium which is Google's open source browser stuff.  I don't think I installed it on Win10 yet. Amazingly it is an important update for Win7 so I installed it there.  I thought I disabled Win7 from the internet by disabling the wifi connection in the system tray rather than disabling  the wifi connection in control panel, but apparently when I reboot Win7, it automatically enables the connection in the system tray.

Apparently there are shortages of laptops at present.  I know Newegg has fewer options than they did a month ago.  I am looking at 14 inch Lenovo.  Newegg has a T480 with 32 GB DDR4 SDRAM, 512 GB SSD, 2 USB 3.1, 2 USB C, 1920x1080 with 250 nits for Less than $1300.  I don't think I need the fingerprint or Thunderbolt features, and would trade them for 1 TB SSD.  I guess I will keep looking.  Do those specs seem reasonable?  i5 processor with Windows 10

But these choices are never perfect and some software requirements are more important than others, and some non-functional reqs more important to me, e.g. security, stability, portability, robustness. The MacBook runs 90% of what I use 90% if the time. AS7 is a minor interest for me and I may well move over to MPLAB as its coverage of AVR and Arm increases.

Re choosing hardware, I should have added a caveat; ceteris paribus. i.e. the assumption that all hardware is created equal in terms of non-functional reqs, which clearly it is not :)

Looking at Surface 3 pricing as a comparison, it's not possible to just add more memory. You have to take pre-canned configs so it's difficult to compare with Apple pricing. I accept that a home-built whitebox will provide better value for money, and be upgradeable.

I should also add that, as a human being, the emotional aspect is a consideration as well. 

Never having seen or heard that before, I had to look it up, then realised it has an obvious translation.

I looked at the price for 15" Core-i7 16GB 256GB SSD Laptop; but not for very long. Interestingly though; there were remarkably fewer Intel options versus Ryzen-5 choices.

Intel are having widely-reported problems reducing process size, and are 6-18 months behind AMD, who outsource chip production to Taiwan.

https://www.theregister.com/2020...

In effect, Intel screwed up 10nm, turned to 7nm to make up lost ground, and went off the rails again.

Meanwhile, competitors like Marvell, AMD, and Nvidia, are already booking capacity within TSMC to ship 5nm chips by the end of 2021. TSMC is ramping up its 5nm output, and is set to churn out Apple-designed processors for the iPhone 12 among other things. Intel previously claimed its now-stalled 7nm process node is as good as TSMC's 5nm.

I don't quite get the problem.  My 9 year old CPU uses 22 nm and it works well.  I don't think new CPUs work much better.

No, unfortunately the memory is not in memory modules, it's soldered on board (like MS Surface), therefore not upgradeable  I could upgrade the disk drive to SSD, but it wasn't really worth it.