[Foundation-l] Re: Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: Re: Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

Tue Oct 25 23:03:07 UTC 2005

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> 
>> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Anthony makes a good point.  Hardware does break down over time, and has
>>> to be replaced.  Even more likely is that it will become obsolete before
>>> it breaks down.
>>
>>
>> When that becomes a significant issue, then the model will need to be
>> updated.
>> I've been told that, so far, pretty much all the hardware we've ever
>> bought is
>> still in use.
> 
> 
> I should point out that it hasn't been that long; we started the Florida
> cluster in early 2004 following the Great Double Server Crash of
> Christmas 2003.
> 
> The oldest machine we have in service is Larousse, an 866-MHz Pentium
> III which does some specialized and backup services, and used to be our
> secondary web server in the old California location.
> 
> Everything else is less than two years old, with the oldest generation
> being 2.6GHz Pentium IVs. Not quite obsolete yet!
> 
> A number of machines have had to go out for repair or replacement over
> time (usually faulty memory, sometimes failed disks), but most are still
> chugging away.
> 
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Moore's Law isn't what it used to be. Processor speeds have virtually been
standing still for the past two years. In October 2003, Intel's fastest
32-bit processor was 3.2 GHz. Today, two years on, it is 3.8 GHz, an
increase of 19%. That's a far cry from the doubling predicted by Moore's law.

Don't think that Moore's law is inevitable, and that some new discovery on
the horizon will see processor speeds resume the trend as if nothing
happened. It shouldn't be suprising that performance increases are becoming
more difficult, as the technology approaches physical limits. I wouldn't be
suprised if the speeds of our present processors remined quite acceptable
for several years to come.

-- Tim Starling