$5k is barely a 1 week fully loaded cost for an experienced SSE.
If I can spend $5k to save a week of optimization work, it's a good deal. Also buying clockspeed can't create new bugs either, which is a risk with any code change.
In my experience, most companies don't think this way, but definitely should think more like this.
That said, companies that need more speed often don't need that extra speed on just one node. So that's really $5K x N nodes. When you consider that just the CPU costs $15K, and not the complete cost of a system, I think it's a lot harder to justify. You better have that next lower tier $10K CPU and know that you need just that little bit more. And then... you probably ought to be investing in scaling out horizontally while that $5K x N buys you time.
Comments
$5k is barely a 1 week fully loaded cost for an experienced SSE.
If I can spend $5k to save a week of optimization work, it's a good deal. Also buying clockspeed can't create new bugs either, which is a risk with any code change.
In my experience, most companies don't think this way, but definitely should think more like this.
That said, companies that need more speed often don't need that extra speed on just one node. So that's really $5K x N nodes. When you consider that just the CPU costs $15K, and not the complete cost of a system, I think it's a lot harder to justify. You better have that next lower tier $10K CPU and know that you need just that little bit more. And then... you probably ought to be investing in scaling out horizontally while that $5K x N buys you time.
Famous last words
Some software does not like high clockspeeds. For example, game engine in GTA V starts acting up when framerate gets too high.