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[King Kitteh]

I hear that the future in computers is for decentralized computing. That is, your device is only an input and output device, and all the calculations are done by a powerful computer connected wirelessly.

They already do the same thing with online banking and such. Send your data and they do all the calculations. Wasn't always like that.

[Evaris]

I hear that the future in computers is for decentralized computing. That is, your device is only an input and output device, and all the calculations are done by a powerful computer connected wirelessly.

They already do the same thing with online banking and such. Send your data and they do all the calculations. Wasn't always like that.

Unfortunately distance means crap for latency, so I somewhat doubt it will ever be a across the board thing for latency-dependent games like DF, or first person shooters.  High performance personal computers will continue to have their place. 

[wierd]

the shared resource nature of big iron is partly why it fell out of favor in the 60s.

guess everything old becomes new again if you wait long enough.

not really looking forward to a revival of big iron, personally.

[jecowa]

The centralized computing idea was from over ten years ago. With mobile processors being so fast and power efficient now, there's not much demand for that. When more mobile processing power is needed, we have stuff like screen sharing and Dwarf Fortress Remote to help.

Maybe in a future where quantum internet is commonplace and quantum computers are prohibitedly expensive to purchase for individual use, then decentralized computing could take off. Decentralized computing isn't going to be helpful to many people with the current silicon-based computing, though.

Edit: fixed link

[wierd]

Tablets running on intel chips are already able to run DF, and do so about as well as the chromebook I am running right now. (similar class of hardware, actually.)

I would presume that phones with intel chips running android are in the same boat, other than needing something like Linux Deploy to start a chroot to run the game in. (still not emulation, just gives a context for a real linux usermode with the android kernel. Crouton does similar on my chromebook.  Got the userspace from ubuntu Xenial running right beside chromeOS, on the chromeOS kernel. The major difference being a real X11 server driving the display directly on the chromebook, vs having to use a vnc connection over the localhost like you usually have to do with an android chroot.)

Modern mobile devices have enough "oomph" to run DF as long as you arent doing megaprojects.

[jecowa]

Even though it works, I'd be worried about running Dwarf Fortress directly on a tablet. Dwarf Fortress is pretty stressful on a desktop computer. A tablet might have trouble staying cool while running it. And doing something that requires so much power might wear down the battery life a little faster. I don't like to play much games on my laptop for this reason.

[Evans]

So!

Having that many informed tech specialists on the forum, let me ask a meaningful question:

What would be the best, most optimal FPS wise consumer product or configuration for running Dwarf Fortress?
Lets forget about prices for the moment and focus only on efficiency.

[Putnam]

Solid state drive, fast RAM, CPU with good single-core performance (latest intel processors right now) and a good deal of cache

[jecowa]

I'm not sure what the best CPU for the job is, but I think it would either be the Broadwell i7-5775C or the Broadwell Xeon E5 2699v4. The i7 has 128 MB of L4 cache, while the Xeon has 55 MB of L3 cache. (L3 cache is something like 4 times faster than L4 cache.) The Xeon also supports DDR4-2400 RAM while the i7 only supports up to DDR3-1600, which would give the Xeon maybe 10-15% faster RAM latency. I'd like to see some Dwarf Fortress benchmarking done with these two setups.

[Fleeting Frames]

Recently saw this PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance

Though that obviously doesn't explicitly include the cache size or RAM.

I wonder if ultrathin 1x1 embark on 1x1 world in 80x25 screen size (small screen can increase FPS quite a bit) could get DF below 120 MB total.

[exdeath]

Not all tasks correlate well with quantum computing.  Massively parallelizable tasks work well, but serialized tasks do not.

Take for instance, asking the computer to find all the factor pairs for 45382937977283222.
The quantum computer can fire off a shitload of parallel factoral comparisons, and get the answer "instantly."
In contrast, a classical computer must try each possible set of factors until it exhausts the problem space.

The quantum computer wins hands down.  This is exactly why quantum computing is interesting for cryptography.

However, what about a complex logic chain, that makes decisions based on the outputs of prior decisions?  Say, computing the damage a dwarf takes from falling onto a spike trap?

The computer must first compute how fast the dwarf is falling, by evaluating how far they have already fallen. It must then make a decision about how the dwarf's stats factor into its ability to dodge, and also how the mass of the object it is landing on influences the impact energy, and then finally, compute how gibbtastic the dwarf will be after the fall's energy is distributed onto their body. 

It make each subdecision based on data in memory, stores the intermediate results in memory, and each decision is fundamentally tied to the output of the prior decision.

The quantum computer cannot evaluate this chain any faster than the classical computer can.

Congratulations for explaining this, better than all websites out there that tries to explain this issue.

[Grimlocke]

Dwarf giblets make everything so much clearer!

Not sure what point trying to fit the whole of DF in CPU cache would be, especially with some of your OS also sitting there. Such a tiny, simple fort will run pretty quick in any case. Unless you want to run a it at a couple thousand FPS, maybe as some sort of timelapse mod testing routine?

In any case I wouldn't overstate the value of the on-cpu cache too much, you'll never fit a more complex and demanding fort in there and the bigger said fort gets, the less significant that cache becomes.

[wierd]

Better is to remove cache contention using a board with discrete CPUs, And giving DF a CPU all to itself.

tyan makes a few, as does msi. 

multicore chips share the on die cache, where discrete cpus do not. (for obvious reasons)

science is needed.

[Dirst]

Dwarf giblets make everything so much clearer!

Not sure what point trying to fit the whole of DF in CPU cache would be, especially with some of your OS also sitting there. Such a tiny, simple fort will run pretty quick in any case. Unless you want to run a it at a couple thousand FPS, maybe as some sort of timelapse mod testing routine?

In any case I wouldn't overstate the value of the on-cpu cache too much, you'll never fit a more complex and demanding fort in there and the bigger said fort gets, the less significant that cache becomes.

It's probably possible to run an older version of DF entirely within the cache (hell, you can run Doom on a modern printer's LCD panel).  But getting DF running a "decent-sized" map entirely in the L3 or L4 cache of a CPU roughly the same vintage is probably never going to be cost-effective.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I hear that the future in computers is for decentralized computing. That is, your device is only an input and output device, and all the calculations are done by a powerful computer connected wirelessly.

They already do the same thing with online banking and such. Send your data and they do all the calculations. Wasn't always like that.

How is that decentralized? And how is that new, apart from the wireless part?