Massively unclear on the concept of "excess capacity, as designed"

[curmudgn]

Thank you for calling Enormous Computer Company Premium Support . . .

What was that again, sir? . . . You see in TaskMan that both computer processors in your workstation are always using less than fifty percent of their capacity, and you want them to use more?

No sir, our engineers designed it to work that way.  The way it is working is the way it was meant to work.  You don’t want to have your processors working at 100% all the time.  When they do work at 100% for more than a second or two, every running program on the computer slows to a crawl and you can’t do any work.

No sir, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.  You don’t want your processors to run at 100% all the time for the same reason you don’t want your car’s engine to run at redline all the time.  It shortens the component’s life, and increases early hardware failures.

No sir, I cannot “find a way to increase it.”  Processor load balancing happens at a level far below anything you, as a user, can get to, or have any business trying to get to.

No sir, I cannot “get an engineer on the phone to explain it to you.”  (For the very good reason that half the engineers who designed that particular platform have been laid off or gone on to do other things, and the ones who haven’t are either in India or in China, and none of them is the least interested in talking to such an ID10T as you.)

Yes sir, thank you for calling Enormous Computer Company.  (. . . and please TRY to understand that the Puritan work ethic does NOT apply when it comes to processors, and hard work is not good for them.)

 

(Perhaps it would be in order to add that this is a imaginary transcript of a very real escalation I took today.  As level-2 tech support, I’m relaying this information via chat to the poor L1 tech who’s actually stuck on the phone with this . . . I suppose I must call it a “person,” for lack of a better term.)

Comments

[n5red.livejournal.com]

Now if you could find someone who would give me detailed information on how to configure the BMC (actually 128 of them) on a brand new blank system in an automated manner. Plugging in a console is seriously non-optimal.

I think they will do a DHCP request, but I would certainly like a little more detail on what option fields are sent and expected.

[curmudgn]

As Nanny Ogg would say, "Sodomy non sapiens." I stay away from the Enterprise boys and girls.

[n5red.livejournal.com]

Well, I've got 130 systems to set up, so I really should automate the process.

[jecook]

Heh. Fortunately, we only do lots of 20 a month, so we can get away with a custom boot disc that connects to our image servers and a semi-automated sysprep'd install.

I'd utterly *HATE* trying to rigure out PxE or RIS... that just sounds like ulcer time.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

(. . . and please TRY to understand that the Puritan work ethic does NOT apply when it comes to processors, and hard work is not good for them.)

It's not all *that* good for *us*, either, as a matter of fact. It would be nice if most middle and upper level management responsible for managing tech support understood that. (Tech support is one of the few jobs where adherence to a Puritan work ethic is actually fairly rigorously enforced. It's also one of the few jobs where people who don't understand it tend to push agents even harder because "all they do is sit and talk on the phone and play with computers all day." Yes, I've actually heard that said out loud, fortunately not here.)

[zzyzx.livejournal.com]

Folding@Home?

[vortex.livejournal.com]

Hah!

I was going to suggest --) A BOINC Project (-- (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/), those will run his processes at MAX.

Currently, I am running Seti@Home and Rosetta@home...

[lillyflowers.livejournal.com]

Let me guess, did this also involve; "But, but I'm not getting my money's worth" /whine

It's a wonder more support folk don't go postal.

[kostika.livejournal.com]

And large amounts of alcohol on the weekends.
And violent video games.

[kallell.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who turned his PC around (work PC) and loaded a program to max out his processors so the fan would warm his hands

[naggy.livejournal.com]

Sir, if you would like your computer to run at 100%, may I interest you in our special 286 model?

[pikaporeon.livejournal.com]

"No sir, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. You don’t want your processors to run at 100% all the time for the same reason you don’t want your car’s engine to run at redline all the time. It shortens the component’s life, and increases early hardware failures."

What hardware failures, specifically?

Like, have you actually had a CPU fail where there wasnt a temperature, overclock or, a -you-fucking-moron-you-bought-a-cyrix problem?

[wibbble]

Running it at maximum will cause the processor to run hotter, requiring more cooling, thus putting heavier load on the cooling system.

Spinning fans will eventually fail. If you spin them faster, they'll fail sooner.

Depending on how clever/new your CPU is, pushing the load will also stop it from reducing its energy consumption, causing the CPU to run hotter and run your power bills up.

Having said that, the only dead CPUs I've ever had to deal with were DOA.

[fuzzyr.livejournal.com]

There is nothing wrong with running your processors at 100% constantly, unless you have a cooling issue or a defective chip.

Not only that, but running at 100% does NOT slow your machine to a crawl, especially if the processes are niced to 19 (lowest priority) on Linux or set to idle priority under Windows.

I understand you're talking to an idiot on the phone, but I hope you don't really believe what you told them.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Yes. This.

Also, it's pretty unusual to see both cores getting much of a workout under Windows because Windows' SMP still sucks balls (and not very bloody many Windows apps have decent threading support).

[harry-whodunnit.livejournal.com]

Of course, that would mean BUYING INTO this nonsense.

[curmudgn]

There was no way on EARTH I was gonna get into that level of technical with the head of a small A/E design office, who appears to have few qualifications besides (1) he owns the place, and (2) somebody-or-another once told him he was "good with computers." If I even began to talk about doing any kind of process management, he would have had it FUBARed within a week, and be back on the phone screaming at us because "NOW IT DOESN'T WORK!!11!!!ONEONE!!1!"

(Which isn't to mention that our queue's mission statement says we're here to fix broken computer hardware, not to support whatever wild OS or application idea a customer may come up with.)

[mynameisnotreal.livejournal.com]

Wait... Why didn't you just send him to some malware sites and tell him to load all the crap his computer could handle? That'd max out the CPU usage just fine!