On the Model of Computation: Counterpoint

Andy Grove (Intel's business leader until 2004) termed "software spiral" the exceptionally resilient business model behind general-purpose CPUs. Application software is the defining component of SWS: Code written once could yet benefit from performance scaling of later CPU generations. SWS is comprised of several abstraction levels. The random access machine, or model (RAM) is most relevant for the current Counterpoint Viewpoint (CPV): each serial step of an algorithm features a basic operation taking unit time ("uniform cost" criterion). The RAM has long been the gold standard for algorithms and data structures.