Best of Computing — June 2024

1. 1
   Article

   Substack·2y

   How to Build an AI Data Center

   The rise of AI will accelerate the trend of building larger and more power-intensive data centers. Finding enough power for these data centers will become increasingly challenging.

   33

   2
2. 2
   Article

   DEV·2y

   Comparing SQL engines by CPU instructions for DML

   This post compares the CPU usage of different SQL engines, such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, TiDB, YugabyteDB, and CockroachDB, for simple DML operations. The results show that despite their different implementations, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server perform well in terms of CPU usage. TiDB, YugabyteDB, and CockroachDB exhibit higher CPU utilization due to their distributed and scalable architectures. Overall, the performance varies depending on the database engine and workload.

   22
3. 3
   Article

   Hacker News·2y

   Pikuma: Exploring How Cache Memory Really Works

   Understanding CPU cache is essential for optimizing programming performance. Cache memory, located within the CPU, is significantly faster than RAM and helps bridge the speed gap between the CPU and main memory. There are different levels of cache (L1, L2, L3), each with varying speeds and sizes. Cache efficiency can be enhanced by techniques such as maintaining data locality, avoiding complex loops, aligning structures, and using appropriate compiler flags. Cache hits and misses play a crucial role in performance, and different cache placement policies can affect how data is retrieved and stored.

   17