David Dalrymple
davidad.github.io · Personal blog · on HN since 2014
David Dalrymple writes about low-level systems topics: assembly, kernels, virtual memory, and unusual programming experiments like brute-forcing 8-queens.
What HN saysHN commenters link it for the 8-queens overkill post and the operating-system critique; the author replied to criticism by pointing to a footnote.
21HN people shared it
3linked it in comments
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Most-shared posts
- 1Systems Past: software innovations we actually use (2014)6 people · 288 points · first shared 2014 · 110 comments on HN
- 2Overkilling the 8-queens Problem5 people · 205 points · first shared 2014 · 53 comments on HN
- 3An OSI model for the 21st century (2014)5 people · 169 points · first shared 2014 · 27 comments on HN
- 4Python to Scheme to Assembly (2014)2 people · 134 points · first shared 2014 · 60 comments on HN
- 5Concurrency Primitives in Intel 64 Assembly2 people · 17 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 6Relocatable vs. Position-Independent Code: Virtual Memory Isn't Just for Swap2 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 7Kernel From Scratch1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 8VNC as a graphical interface medium1 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
userbinator · 2015-03-09
Following 9 months of computation and 4 petabyte of disk IO on a Dell PowerEdge R280 server
I wonder if the time could be improved by optimising the programs some more, since at this scale constants matter a lot. The amount of memory needed might not be reducible but optimising a tight loop and reordering it to take advantage of cache effects could yield nontrivial speedups.
Taking advantage of the very wide new instructions in recent CPUs might also be worth it, instructions which compilers often have difficulty figuring out how to use effectively:
http://davidad.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/overkilling-the-8-queens-prob…
ruffel · 2017-06-01
Would it be this one?
http://davidad.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/overkilling-the-8-queens-prob…
davidad_ · 2014-03-15
I included a footnote to address this criticism.
http://davidad.github.io/blog/2014/03/12/the-operating-system-is-out-o…