I watch F1 regularly, but to hear him speak of getting a gain of "tenths of a second" as a huge thing is still astonishing to me.
Must be a frustrating life. Specially speaking as a software developer, where we're getting a free doubling of the speed every 18 months. I'm sure Moore's Law will run out at some point, but I can never quite appreciate exactly how much that helps us. The helps give a little perspective.
Just be glad you don't work on high-frequency trading systems if "tenths of a second" seems like a frustratingly small gain. Our office erupts into cheers when we shave a microsecond or even 500 nanoseconds off our loop times. :)
Loop of what, some kind of numerical iteration? Sounds like fun, what kind of platform is this on. I assume any kind of OS or HLL is out of the question.
It's a competitive sport, so given the current resources and technology, how much performance can you eke out is really what I should have been thinking about. In an adversarial environment like you describe, I'm sure every bit of time you gain is a huge plus. So yes, our speed doubles every 2 years, but so do our competitors'.
