Updated: 2010-08-31 15:17:22
I came across a new (to me) suite of benchmarks today at Dr Dobbs’ Go Parallel website. They provide C and C++ simulations that are designed to test compiler optimisation, language support, the overhead of object-oriented programming and the hardware performance. Two of the tests are focused on parallel performance. An OpenMP based test repeatedly [...]
Updated: 2010-08-25 15:37:49
While looking for new parallel programming blogs this week, I stumbled across an ancient but timeless blog post by Joey deVilla. In it, he has collected together some of the most common laws of software development. Some of these you will be familar with. Readers of this blog will know all about Amdahl’s Law, and [...]
Updated: 2010-08-25 12:29:14
Blogger András Vajda has suggested a new approach to meeting the challenge of manycore processors. He works at Ericsson and blogs his own views about parallel programming, among other topics. His starting point is familiar to you: Within ten years, we could have chips with tens of thousands of cores on them, he reasons. How will [...]
Updated: 2010-08-24 15:56:42
Intel has launched a new dual-core Atom processor, which is likely to see multicore chips become much more popular in netbooks. The 1.5GHz N550 consumes a similar amount of power to its forerunner the single-core N450, but offers more performance and a smaller form factor. It will enable netbooks to be as thin as half [...]
Updated: 2010-08-18 15:29:10
Scientific Computing has published an article called ‘Breaking through the programming wall‘, written by Steve Conway, research VP for high performance computing (HPC) at IDC. The piece provides an excellent summary of the multicore challenge, so if anyone asks you what the big deal is about multicore, you can send them the link as a [...]
Updated: 2010-08-17 15:24:27
I’ve played a view odd computer games in my time. I remember Potty Pigeon, where you had to gather sticks to build a nest, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, where I could never fathom what was going on. But I’ve never seen a game in which you play a duck hunting for oil reserves beneath the [...]
Updated: 2010-08-16 15:25:16
Anyone who’s passionate about music has a discussion from time to time where they try to convince someone else that their own favourite album is the greatest album ever. Not just in opinion, but fact. They’ll argue the production is superior to anything else, or they’ll emphasise the songwriting or the performance. It ends up a [...]
Updated: 2010-08-11 14:41:16
In an exciting new development, phase 2 of the Intel Theading Challenge will give participants a chance to test their code on the Intel Manycore Testing Lab. This offers remote testing on 32 core hardware (offering 64 threads) and has until now only been available to academics. Now, commercial programmers participating in the Intel Threading [...]
Updated: 2010-08-11 12:10:34
Go to Intel.com United States English Search Intel® Software Network Communities Atom Developer Program Visual Computing Parallel Programming Manageability Academic Earn Reputation Intel® Black Belt Program More . Partners Intel® Software Partner Program Member Benefits Software Checkers Program News Tools Downloads Tools Intel® Software Development Products Intel® Parallel Studio HPC Tools Knowledge Base Academic Downloads Code Downloads Free Non-Commercial WhatIf Experimental Software Drivers Intel® Driver Update Utility Forums Support Software Forums Atom Developer Forums Knowledge Base Support Resources Blogs All Blogs Atom Developer Program Academic Manageability Parallel Programming Visual Computing Meet the Bloggers Resources Intel® Software Network TV Take-5 Videos Events Calendar
Updated: 2010-08-09 16:03:13
I loved this blog post by software engineer Yohan Liyanage. He asks whether it’s harder to synchronise two threads or a thousand threads. While you think about your answer, I’ll tell you that he discovered the conundrum in a presentation by Paul Tyma, senior engineer at Google (a company famous for asking quirky interview questions [...]
Updated: 2010-08-07 17:17:06
Develop your own operating system using C# (or VB.Net, etc) and Visual Studio!
Updated: 2010-08-04 17:29:29
You might remember that I blogged last year about a new experimental programming language that Google has created to tackle today’s programming challenges, including concurrency. It’s called Go and I was reminded of it again when I saw that Rob Pike gave a talk at OSCON about it. MIT’s Technology Review quotes Pike as saying [...]
