alt Hacker NewsBut it is, he's talking about real systems with real processes in a generic way, not a singular hypothetical where suddenly all that work must be done, so you can also apply you general knowledge that some of those background processes aren't useful (but can't even be disabled due to system lockdown)
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locknitpicker • yesterday at 7:45 PM
> (...) a singular hypothetical where suddenly all that work must be done (...)
This is far from being a hypothesis. This is an accurate description of your average workstation. I recommend you casually check the list of processes running at any given moment in any random desktop or laptop you find in a 5 meter radius.
I think you're right that the article didn't provide criteria for when this type of system is better or worse than another. For example, the cost of splitting a work into threads and switching between threads needs to be factored in. If that cost is very high, then the multi-thread system could very well be worse. And there are other factors too.
However, given the trend in modern software engineering to break work into units and the fact that on modern hardware thread switches happen very quickly, being able to distribute that work across different compute clusters that make different optimization choices is a good thing and allows schedulers to get results closer to optimal.
So really it boils down to if the gains in doing the work on different compute outweighs the cost splitting and distributing the work, then it's a win. And for most modern software on most modern hardware, the win is very significant.
As always, YMMV