| From: o1bigtenor via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Somehow I'm supposed to believe that Windows is serious about security - - | - - tough for me to believe. | Yes they will eliminate a couple deep security flaws but what about the 10s | of thousands of other flaws? Security is very hard in the face of a bounty of features. Windows has a lot of features. Microsoft wants backwards compatability compatibility, at least for software. This means that re-achitecting things for greater security is very hard. Most people don't like the inconvenience that comes with greater security. Nor do they want to pay for it. Linux security is subject to the same forces. We should not presume that Linux has the high moral ground. Linux's transparency is a double-edged sword from a security standpoint, but I think that it is a net win. The same can be said for the diversity of Linux systems. | I found 'linux' back in early 2000 after I got a virus on Win 98 SE. OK, I'll admit it. Win 98 security was way way worse than early 2000's Linux. | Did some thinking at the time and realized that even at that time the | anti-virus/bug killing industry was | 'only' worth $4 billion USD and today likely 'far much more'. | I remain unconvinced that M$ wants this part of its cash cow to disappear. I'm not sure. AV software isn't directly a profit centre for them. Additionally, the bundled AV software on Windows badly degrades the performance of the only Windows application I use (Windows Update). If it degrades the performance of other applications as badly, it alone would be a strong reason to run Linux. But I don't know this and don't care to waste my time experimenting. Windows Update is the worst application I use on Windows, but perhaps because it is essentially the only one I run. (I use Windows run tax software once a year.) | They are just trying to | appease some vocal detractors and will be able to point at these | couple three flaws and say - - - - | look Ma - - - we fixed the holes - - - - whilst creating ever more - - - - | what a royal joke! Actually, the new baseline requirements add to "defence in depth". This is a Good Thing. I expect Linux to use the features on systems that have them available (except for the new style of Windows drivers (DCH)). | These changes will force about 85% of users to upgrade - - - I suppose its | part of the plan to | drive profit margins up but this could backfire if john q public figures | out how they're getting | hosed! (Hope it does get out!!) | Likely Win 11 is also part of the forced upgrade routine too - - - - argh!! It's a little fuzzy, but it looks as if Win 11 can run on old hardware but automatic upgrading to Win 11 will be blocked. Whether old hardware gets replaced depends on whether (1) the transition is desired by ordinary users (2) the transition is easy for ordinary users to effect (3) users understand (1) and (2) -- advertising can influence this. Certainly the value proposition of replacing old hardware has never been lower. System capabilities, performance, and price have not been improving quickly since Intel Core's 4th generation. (As I've said before, my main desktop is almost eight years old and I don't have a good reason to replace it. I keep wanting to for some odd version of fun or adventure, but have so far resisted.)

| From: Dave Collier-Brown via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | However, recent AMD architecture changes have caused a large step | upwards in number of hardware threads: my production Intels have either | 10 or 18, and my two test AMDs have 512 and 1024. And they draw less | current. AMD's Thread-Ripper and Epyc have a lot of cores. (I don't know how to value hyperthreads, but Intel and AMD kind of match.) How many processor sockets do your Intel and AMD systems have? I'd guess that the Intel has fewer sockets than the AMD, but it might not be so. Each socket generates a lot of heat. Perhaps 200+w in servers. Each socket might provide additional memory bandwidth. As time has passed since Haswell, density of chips has gone up. My i7-4770 has "22 nm lithography". Current chips from AMD use TSMC's 7nm process which might be five times as dense as the Intel's 22nm. Reasoning: not everything scales; Intel 10nm is about like TSMC 7nm; (22/10) ^ 2 isn't far off 5. So current processors ought to be five times as powerful in some way. That way is mostly core count. I imagine lots of cleverness improves things too, but the Haswell generation was already fairly clever. The i7-4770 has 4 cores and each had 2 hyperthreads. Scale-by-5 and you get 20 cores. Threadripper 3990x has 64 cores but it is way more expensive and throws of a lot more heat (84w vs 280w). Perhaps a better comparison would be with Ryzen 7 5700G. Like the i7, it has an integrated GPU. It is rated at 65w. It has 8 cores, similar clock frequencies ("max boost clock" is higher), better instructions/clock (IPC), better iGPU. Currently the price is roughly twice what the i7 would have cost (we live in strange times). Xeon prices have historically been very high. AMD's server parts have cut like a knife through that market. Summary: a Haswell system's book value has amortized down to almost nothing and yet it still works well for most desktop users. Why upgrade? Perhaps lots of little things: - NVMe support - USB improvements since USB 3.0 - DDR4 instead of DDR3 - Win 11 likes newer systems - a few security things that users likely don't understand - AVX 512 - PCI 4 - improvements in gaming performance -- every little bit counts (You can get Dell XPS desktops with 10th and 11th gen Intel Core processors quite cheaply off of Kijiji at the moment. People bought them for the video card, ripped that out, and are selling the rest of the system. If I actually needed a new desktop right now, that's what I might buy.) | This doesn't have as much effect on small machines, but it does greatly | improve price-performance. Expect to see a step-function upwards in | performance and some price improvements as the bottleneck shifts away | from chip price toward capacity per watt. Yeah. Desktops are not improved much; big server systems much more so. I keep expecting killer ARM servers. Very slow to arrive. But then I (and perhaps you) thought Sun's Niagara was a killer system too.