HN Explorer

How do you utilize your personal computing power?

4 points by gabesullice ↗ HN
Last year, I built a computer with 64GB of RAM and the latest and greatest desktop i9 processor. When working off my laptop, I can definitely appreciate that my desktop is a more capable development machine since compilations and my IDE project indexes happen almost instantaneously (and boy can I open a lot of browser tabs), but I still feel like I'm under-utilizing my machine.

What processes do you run that make you appreciate all the processing power and memory available to us nowadays? I'm already aware of things like folding@home and I'm not a gamer, so I'm more interested in the "personal" side of personal computation.

4 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 13.9 ms ] thread
anyfoo
I don't like wasting the energy, so I'm not really running anything while it idles (and goes to sleep), but I really appreciate the power that is available when synthesizing/implementing an FPGA design, or when using MATLAB, both for hobby purposes. Especially now that there is an open beta for MATLAB to run natively on my M1 Max.
gabesullice
Interesting hobby! What sort of hobby requires FPGA designs and MATLAB?

(And to clarify, I didn't mean long-running background processes while idling, so your answer was perfect)

anyfoo
Ah, I only mentioned the idle thing because you also mentioned folding@home (which at least seems like a good use of the cycles; I remember in the 90s there was a thing where people used their idle cycles to break an RC5 key just as a contest).

As for FPGAs and MATLAB: They are not necessarily for the same hobby, but one hobby that not only uses both, but also benefits from my computer's power is DSP (i.e. Digital Signal Processing). As an example, I made both encoders and decoders for NTSC and PAL.

I use MATLAB for other stuff too, though, for example for analog electronics. Designing filters, characterizing feedback loops and so on. No FPGA in that case.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos
I love the power available for video encoding. I use it about twice a week. It is great for rendering subs, down-scaling, and compressing suitable for shitty web playback.