Introduction to the machinery

Posted on May 31, 2020

The german philosopher and media scientist Max Goldt once observed that articles in the mass media citing recent research results almost always emphasize that they have been achieved using state-of-the-art computer technology. Claims that some cutting edge research has been done using e.g. five year old computer technology, says Goldt, are virtually unheard of.

This blog is different. The laptop I’m using to write the blog is five years old. The desktop computer I’ll use for the experiments is ten years old. Given that the lab is not about cutting edge research, I think that’s okay. Wait, the hardware might by old but the software is what I would call fairly up to date. The desktop computer runs FreeBSD 12.1. That being said, its hardware specs are:

  • mainboard: Asus M2N68-CM
  • processor: AMD Athlon II X4 610e, 2.4GHz, 4 cores, revision C3, 512KB L1 cache, 2MB L2 cache, no L3 cache
  • RAM: 4GB
  • hard disk: SSD, ADATA SU800, 256GB (Okay, this one is also new.)