How to Waste CPU Like a Professional
Key topics
The article 'How to waste CPU like a Professional' presents technical methods for intentionally wasting CPU cycles, sparking a discussion on creative ways to utilize CPU resources and the relevance of such techniques in modern computing.
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Discussion Activity
Moderate engagementFirst comment
2h
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9
0-6h
Avg / period
4.3
Based on 13 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Sep 19, 2025 at 4:28 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Sep 19, 2025 at 6:11 PM EDT
2h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
9 comments in 0-6h
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Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Sep 23, 2025 at 4:40 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04
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Pleasantly surprised by the technical article :). Reminds me of a lot of precise-number-of-idle-cycles functions from embedded world in a prior life
I think volatile is usually fairly well contained I can't immediately think of an obvious case where it could adjust the performance of the calling context indirectly but its pushing the problem onto that cache coherence part of the CPU so its not quite the same as an algorithm that consumes all the memory bandwidth or execution ports. Lots of little interesting trade offs in the weeds of this and other potential solutions depending on if any of this matters.
I was looking for some script like count primes I could run