So for me Scala development is my highest consideration when purchasing desktop and laptop computer hardware. Unfortunately Scala development is generally not included in the productivity suite of hardware bench-marking. Can we assume that the C compiler bench marks are the closest proxies? I generally work in IntelliJ.
There is no longer (if there ever was) a best CPU. Depending on the application, can favour more cores, more e-cores, higher clocks, more cache, or 512 vector extensions. In particular I was surprised to see that the extra 3D cache for AMD didn’t seem to help for C compiling, although it does in most AAA games. Is this likely to be the case in real world use Scala development?
What about memory? Getting sufficient memory should be straight forward unless we are very price constrained, but should we prioritise bandwidth or latency?
From my experience using IntelliJ on an LG Gram 17" 8GB isn’t enough memory.
IntelliJ definitely uses multiple cores, so the more cores the better, up to around 8 where the benefits tail off. I would suggest that improving SSD performance is will probably make one of the biggest differences.
For work I use a MacBook M1 Pro Max with 64gb of RAM and, as you might imagine, performance is excellent. However, it weighs a tonne compared to the LG Gram - one of these with 16GB of RAM would make an excellent, lightweight development laptop with a great screen resolution and size.
@RichType I would like to know about what your development environment is? Just plain Scala with some libraries or some more workloads like Docker, databases, Kubernetes, web servers, UI, graphics workloads etc. Each workload requires some more of different resource and usually means a notch up on your hardware specs.
Also if on a PC using Linux is way faster and lower on resources than Windows.16GiB RAM with a mid range CPU should be enough.
Just plain Scala with libraries, building a 70k line repository. I may want to run a couple of servers at the same time. Looking ahead I’m probably going to want to create some videos and may want to do some music creation. My current desktop has an I7 9700K with 64 Gig RAM.
I’ve pretty much decided to go with a Zen 5 3D cpu. I’ll probably wait to see what the top 3D CPUS are like. I don’t think I need more than 16 cores, so no need to jump up to a thread ripper.
The big disappointment of Zen 5 was its using the same memory controller as Zen 4 and seemingly can have even worse inter CCD latency issues than Zen 4. For Zen 5 AMD have moved the extra cache underneath the core. This is worse in terms of power consumption, complexity, heat generation and flexibility in the size and stacking of the 3D cache than having it above the CPU cores. However it is better at heat dissipation, allowing for higher clocks. So 3D compensates for the weak memory controller.