>For computers, Musk said, using large numbers of small computers ends up being a more efficient, smarter, and faster approach than using a few larger, more powerful computers.
I always figured, in theory, a super-super-powerful single threaded single processor would out compete the multi-threaded multi processor design on efficiency, because of the hardware and software inefficiencies in inter processor hardware connections and communication. In practice, I suppose there is always a physical limit on the total capacity of low latency addressable ram and storage you can manage to shove into an architecture.
> I suppose there is always a physical limit on the total capacity of low latency addressable ram and storage you can manage to shove into an architecture.
Some people even argue that, due to these physical limits, storage access time tends to scale O(sqrt(N)) with the size N of the storage, including for RAM.
I always figured, in theory, a super-super-powerful single threaded single processor would out compete the multi-threaded multi processor design on efficiency, because of the hardware and software inefficiencies in inter processor hardware connections and communication. In practice, I suppose there is always a physical limit on the total capacity of low latency addressable ram and storage you can manage to shove into an architecture.