[vcf-midatlantic] efficiency, put another way

[VAXman at tmesis.org]

Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic writes: 

>I view efficiency as: 
>
>Fast (amount of time to do), Good (quality, meets requirements), and
>Cheap (overall cost). Pick any 2 

There's more to weighing in efficiency in today's computing environments than
just tossing some faster processor at the problem.  Many multiple processors,
VLM architectures and NUMA pose issues that can NOT be addressed simply with
sloppy programming masked/cured by faster processing.  However, if you and or
your programmers only have experience with simple desktop type systems, these
issues are as foreign a concept as tensor calculus is to a grade schooler.  I
have seen applications in such environments, well written too, degrade rather
quickly because someone configured the environment without consideration for
and of the ramifications of these modern system aspects.