2 stories
Ghostty 1.4 raises macOS I/O throughput 25 to 55 percent, lifts ASCII parsing from 128 MB/s to 725 MB/s, and compresses idle scrollback while raising the default limit from 10 MB to 50 MB. It also plays animated Kitty-protocol images and ships a drop-in `ghostty +ssh` wrapper.
The thread asked what the point of fast terminals is, and the creator answered with something else.
The top HN threads: facts from the discussions, both sides, insider voices. Email, Telegram, or RSS.
Mitchell Hashimoto argues SIMD — processing 4, 8, or 16+ values per CPU instruction instead of one — is simpler than its reputation, because nearly all real-world vectorized code follows the same five-step pattern.
He proves it on production Ghostty terminal code: a one-line scalar loop finding printable character runs becomes a twelve-line vectorized version, delivering roughly 5x real-world throughput on AVX2.
The sharpest thread reply wasn't about the code — it was about control: with SIMD explicit and hand-written, an unrelated compiler update can't silently turn your fast path back into a scalar loop without you noticing.
