> If you're I/O bound, that either means the problem doesn't require much computation - which is possible but fairly rare
This is backwards. I bet that by count, many more programs are written in domains where they're necessarily IO bound than the inverse. Anything that uses the network for its core functionality, anything reliant on a datasource whose aggregate contents are O(memory)+ size, or anything reliant on slow peripherals (lots of embedded software) are in this class.
Scientific simulations, HFT algorithms, video games, LLMs, etc.--the stuff in the other class--aren't inconsequential, but they're dwarfed in number by the class of software that spends 99+% of its time waiting for IO. Hell, entire programming languages (node.js) have been created in response to that proportion.
That’s completely backwards by orders of magnitude. Modern CPUs outrun L1 cache speed by a lot, L1 cache speed is on order of 1000-5000 GB/s, a GB/s is real bits used, is 8x of Gbps, and network speeds include significant overhead bits for frame packing and other data unused for the actual payloads.
This is backwards. I bet that by count, many more programs are written in domains where they're necessarily IO bound than the inverse. Anything that uses the network for its core functionality, anything reliant on a datasource whose aggregate contents are O(memory)+ size, or anything reliant on slow peripherals (lots of embedded software) are in this class.
Scientific simulations, HFT algorithms, video games, LLMs, etc.--the stuff in the other class--aren't inconsequential, but they're dwarfed in number by the class of software that spends 99+% of its time waiting for IO. Hell, entire programming languages (node.js) have been created in response to that proportion.