Hello, everyone! I’ve been doing some research into computer hardware lately, and one thing that I keep coming across is this idea that the speed of a processor, while important, isn’t the only thing that affects a computer’s overall performance. I’m having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around this because I always thought that a faster processor meant a faster computer. Can anyone explain why this isn’t necessarily the case? I’m really interested to learn more about this!
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I always think of it like your processor is like having a really smart really fast college professor that can do complex math and calculations. The more cores you have the more professors you have that can run a calculation in parallel. The caveat is that you can only give them about 1 page worth of math problems/text book reference material to work with at a time. That’s why there is a runner that has to grab a problem from the stack, put it on a piece of paper and give it to the professors. If your runners are slow and the task requires multiple pages to be transferred over then it’s going to take a long time as the runners will limit you.
Another thing to consider is the task you are asking of the professors. If the CPU is your professors then a GPU is like 20,000 classrooms full of middle/highschool algebra students. The kids can’t do complex level calculus or things like that but if you have heaps of basic math problems to solve then the hundreds of thousands of students are going to finish significantly faster than the 4-32 college professors, even if the runners are moving at light speed to keep the professors topped off with data.
So to tldr, the professors are extremely important but other things in the process can slow them down or they are not the right tool for the job.
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