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Posts from Clay Breshears (Intel) 
 |
Clay Breshears is the author of "The Art of Concurrency" published by O'Reilly and a self-admitted Thread Monkey. He is currently a Courseware Architect for the Intel Scale Programs Organization, specializing in multi-core and multithreaded programming and training. Starting at Intel in September 2000, Clay was a Senior Parallel Application Engineer at the Intel Parallel Applications Center in Champaign, IL, implementing multithreaded and distributed solutions in customer applications. Clay received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee, but has been involved with parallel computation and programming for over twenty-five years; six of those years were spent in academia at Eastern Washington University and The University of Southern Mississippi. |
Can I still get an Energy Efficient Free Lunch?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 17, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Comments (3)
When the semiconductor industry was turning to multicore chips and lowering clock rates, Herb Sutter wrote a seminal article entitled "The Free Lunch is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software." Up to that point software developers relied on the increasing clock speeds (the "free lunch") to give their software a boost in the next generation [...]
Category: Power Efficiency
Tags: mobile apps, Ultrabook
1 million new jobs from robotics industries
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 15, 2012 at 9:51 am
Comments (1)
I was intrigued by the teaser for the IEEE- USA Today's Engineer story "The Real Steel: Robotics Careers Ready to Boom". It cited a market research report that claimed there would be 1 million new jobs added due to the robotics industry over the next 5 years. Many of these jobs will come from obvious sources like [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Sweet 16?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 6, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Comments (4)
Have we already hit the maximum number of cores that can be put in our processors? Or have the needs of the user and developer communities been served at sixteen cores?
Category: Parallel Programming, Power Efficiency, Server
Using Amdahl's Law for Energy Efficient Performance Estimation?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 26, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Comments (1)
While trying to find an answer to my previous question, I stumbled across the paper "Extending Amdahl's Law for Energy-Efficient Computing in the Many-Core Era" (Computer, Dec. 2008, pp. 24-31) by Dong Hyuk Woo and Hsien-Hsin S. Lee (Georgia Institute of Technology). The title had me thinking that this might be an investigation into finding [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Power Efficiency
How would you define "Energy Efficient"?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 18, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Comments (0)
Say your boss comes to you and tells you to ensure that the software project you are working on is energy efficient. (Go ahead, I'll wait while you say it.) There are all kinds of ideas to be found on the Power Efficiency Community site on how to accomplish this assignment. What I'd like to [...]
Category: Power Efficiency
Parallel Programming is easier than separating 2 corks
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 6, 2012 at 3:47 pm
Comments (2)
I've known Prof. Tom Murphy for a few years now. Whenever we were at a conference or other event together and had dinner, he invariably would ask the wait staff if they had two corks he could have. If the place served wine, it wasn't too difficult to find two corks that were the same size [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Tags: cork trick, EAPF, SC11, Tom Murphy
Can your phone SEE what you're saying?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 16, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Comments (5)
Since I don't have a smartphone (and am not in the market for one), I don't typically care what new features get put into the latest models. That is, unless it is cool and interesting. When I first saw commercials for the Apple iPhone S and Siri, I thought it must have been a recreation [...]
Category: Uncategorized
As fall Idaho twins, so falls Twin Falls, ID
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 14, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Comments (3)
A chapter has closed on my career here at Intel. I hope this post isn't too maudlin.
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
MIC: Stepping-stone to Quantum Computing?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 14, 2011 at 9:59 am
Comments (4)
I was reading Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists by Noson S. Yanofsky and Mirco A. Mannucci while I was on the treadmill last night. I started out reading the description of Shor's algorithm (for factoring integers) and thought that implementing this on a classical computer (in parallel, of course) would make an interesting problem for the Intel [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Server
Tags: MIC, QRAM, quantum computation
FLASH: Why haven't we seen this sooner?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 12, 2011 at 10:32 am
Comments (3)
I saw an announcement of the Gordon supercomputer in an online Wired article. What made the new installation at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) noteworthy wasn't the size of the machine or that the machine debuted at #48 on the TOP500 list. No, it was the fact that Gordon is the world's first supercomputer [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Power Efficiency, Server
It's here! The Intel Guide for Developing Multithreaded Applications
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 27, 2011 at 9:54 am
Comments (11)
Okay, so it's not something that I would promote as "New & Improved" with big splashy TV commercials, like some laundry detergent or kids' sugary drink. I would be more likely to skip the trumpets and play a fanfare on a kazoo instead. Even so, I'm excited to announce that the Intel Guide for Developing Multithreaded [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 17, 2011 at 9:53 am
Comments (0)
I knew this day was coming, but you're never prepared for it. I was in Portland, OR, for an internal Intel conference. Before the meeting got started, I arrived early and decided to browse Powell's Books. The technical store's location has changed and the name seems to now be Powell's #2, so I wanted to see what [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Do monkeys even know about iambic pentameter?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 26, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Comments (3)
I guess I can understand why Shakepeare is the chosen meter stick for this kind of project. Still, why not hope for the Great American Novel, pop song lyrics, or a script for the next "Planet of the Apes" movie?
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Tags: infinite monkeys, Shakespeare
Does anyone still remember Mnemosyne?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 23, 2011 at 8:38 am
Comments (0)
You can do it.... One of the Titans from Greek mythology? .... Mother to the Nine Muses? .... Oh, never mind, just Google it already.
Category: Uncategorized
Tags: IBM Watson, jeopardy, Memory
These are your 2011 Faces of Parallelism...
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 20, 2011 at 11:23 am
Comments (0)
I just wish we had been thinking ahead and had their actual faces that we could post, too.
Category: Events, Parallel Programming
Tags: faces of parallelism, idf2011, Intel Parallel Building Blcoks, parallel programming
Do you have a face for parallelism?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 8, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Comments (1)
It's never nice to tell someone that they have "a face for radio." But, if you're going to be at IDF 2011, you should attend the "Faces of Parallelism" lab to show off your parallel face.
Category: Events, Parallel Programming
Tags: Array Building Blocks, Cilk Plus, idf, parallel programming, TBB
Blue Waters and Red Ink
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 9, 2011 at 7:14 am
Comments (8)
I got a bit of a shock this morning. On the front page of the local newspaper (and the online version, too) was the story about IBM pulling out of the Blue Waters project with NCSA. (HPCwire covered it here.) The main reason for IBM's decision is reported to be due to the project no [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
When Threading Building Blocks Attack!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 28, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Comments (9)
This week (25-29 JUL 2011) I'm lecturing at the UPCRC UIUC Summer School on Multicore Programming. I like teaching parallel programming and I live near the UIUC campus, so it's convenient for me. Overall I have a good time and often learn some things from the students. As an example, I found the following oddity about using [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: lambda functions, parallel_reduce, TBB, Threading Building Blocks
Antediluvian Holes and Pegs o' my Heart
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 18, 2011 at 3:10 pm
Comments (0)
Have you ever been confronted and confused by too many choices? Seven Deadly Sins? Thirty-one flavors? 5000 fingers of Dr. T? 10,000 Maniacs? Sometimes it is enough to make you throw up your hands in surrender and not do anything. Now, there is help for the parallel programmer that feels she has too many options [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Maybe this iGravy iTrain is still running
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 13, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Comments (2)
Is there still money to be made from cyber-squatting or tradename-squating? Maybe, but only if you can guess product names for future technology and products.
Category: Uncategorized
This could lead to excellence (or serious injury)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 8, 2011 at 10:13 am
Comments (6)
Would you ever consult a robot doctor? What if there were more than a dozen different doctor's worth of knowledge and experience contained within the automaton? What if your human doctor simply consulted with a set of diagnostic algorithms to ensure the right conclusion was reached?
Category: Parallel Programming
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 3, 2011 at 9:00 am
Comments (2)
If I yield to this temptation now does that make me a hypocrite or just another techno-savvy wonk that waited until something better came along?
Category: Uncategorized
I'd prefer reaching Parallel Programming Nirvana
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 18, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Comments (1)
Have you seen the article "Nine Tips to Parallel Programming Heaven"? This is excerpted advice from an interview of Dr. Yann Golanski by Stephen Blair-Chappell and details Dr. Golanski's recommendations to someone starting to parallelize an application. Sure, it's got one more point than my own "8 Simple Rules for Designing Threaded Applications" and they all fit [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Comprehending Large Numbers
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 17, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Comments (0)
When I was in 6th grade, I wrote out the number Googol ('1' followed by 100 zeroes). I cut and taped strips of paper together to be able to display it in a single long string. It was impressive at that time. I found another impressive number today reading through John Morris's ZDNet blog overview of [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Maybe they're waiting for the movie version of "Differential Geometry of Elliptic Curves"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 13, 2011 at 9:14 am
Comments (1)
Intel has an electronic employee newsletter. We get company news, announcements, human interest stories, convention reports, etc. One other regular feature is a poll of employees on a wide range of topics. Things like how often we eat meat to our favorite movie genre to what kind of mobile device we use the most are typical topics. [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Round 2: Microgrant Awards for Parallelism in the Classroom
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 29, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Comments (0)
The deadline for entries to the Second Round of the Intel Academic Microgrant program is a few days away (04 MAY). Have you entered yet? If not, don't delay, do it today!
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Spelling Lesson
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 28, 2011 at 7:14 am
Comments (0)
What's that word you use that means "to transform serial code into a parallel equivalent"? Obviously this will be a "new" word since I'm pretty sure the Romans and other Latin speakers had no concept of parallel computation and, therefore, we don't have some root word from that language on which to draw from. This means we [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Why weren't you at the Intel Parallel Programming Meetup?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 21, 2011 at 11:36 am
Comments (0)
The first Intel Parallel Meetup event was held 24 MAR 2011. From the video it looks like everyone had a good time despite the bad weather. At least everyone that didn't stay home, like me.
Category: Events, Intel SW Partner Program, Parallel Programming
DJ Thr3d'z Parizzelism Slam
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 12, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Comments (3)
What are your plans for the next 9-10 weeks? Whatever they are, change them. Change them, now! You have a date with coding glory that is off the hook!!
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
"Only be sure always to call it please 'research'"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 7, 2011 at 8:50 am
Comments (3)
It amazes and saddens me when politicians today will deny giving some statement or position that contradicts their current agenda and the host or interviewer then cues up the video recording of them making the contradicted statement. Back before we had widespread video technology, public figures could get away with such a flip-flop position. Who was [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
The death of graphology?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 30, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Comments (3)
My mother has exquisite penmanship (and an affinity to purple ink). I don't remember much about my father's writing, but I do recall that I always thought he had a strong, legible signature. Of course, my parents come from a generation that emphasized penmanship as a vital academic pursuit. For me, learning cursive writing in 3rd [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Automatic Program Grading System from NTU
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 22, 2011 at 8:56 am
Comments (1)
I can't believe that I forgot to mention this in my blog post about the training sessions we held in Taiwan the first week in March 2011. I need to remember to consult my notes when I'm writing up these reports. Professor Pangfeng Liu from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
I just flew in from Taiwan, and, Boy! are my arms tired
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 22, 2011 at 8:12 am
Comments (0)
This is the third of three blog posts detailing my recent trip to Taiwan. The trip was to do a training course introducing Taiwanese professors on how to use the Intel Manycore Testing Lab. This first part details my flight and first day on the island nation. The second part discusses the actual the training course. This [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Taiwanese Academics Programming the Intel Manycore Testing Lab
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 14, 2011 at 10:28 am
Comments (0)
This is the second (and probably most relevant) part of a three part sequence on my recent trip to Taiwan. The trip was to do a training course introducing Taiwanese professors on how to use the Intel Manycore Testing Lab. The first part dealt with my flight and first day on the island nation; the third [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Tags: Manycore Testing Lab
Getting to Taiwan and what I found there
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 10, 2011 at 7:55 am
Comments (1)
This is the first is a series of three blog posts detailing my recent trip to Taiwan. The trip was to do a training course introducing Taiwanese professors on how to use the Intel Manycore Testing Lab. This first part details my flight out and first day on the island nation. If you're just interested [...]
Category: Uncategorized
A Tale of Two Cakes
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 8, 2011 at 8:30 am
Comments (2)
"...it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity..." What kind of parallel stunt could we put on to celebrate the 100th episode of Parallel Programming Talk?
Category: Parallel Programming
Don't foist your oyster moisture onto the cloister
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 20, 2011 at 9:59 am
Comments (1)
What is a nonsense sentence that the IBM Watson supercomputer could parse in under 14 milliseconds?
Category: Parallel Programming
Why Parallel Performance Results Don't Matter...much
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 11, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Comments (10)
I'm getting to be pretty blasé about seeing speedup and performance from parallel applications in the literature. If it didn't run faster than the serial version, you wouldn't have written it, right? So, tell me something I don't know.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Performance and Optimization
My Parallel Junkie Enabler
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 10, 2011 at 8:52 am
Comments (1)
I love my wife. You may recall that for my 2008 birthday she got me Introduction to Algorithms, 3E. She knows how to feed my "addiction" for parallel programming knowledge and books. For Christmas this year she got me a copy of Introduction to Parallel Computing, 2E, by Grama, Gupta, Karypis, and Kumar. I have the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Does this chip make my 1000 cores look fat?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 4, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Comments (0)
Researchers at the University of Glasgow report that they have been able to squeeze over 1000 processing cores into a single chip.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Maybe I do have an answer
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 17, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Comments (1)
In my last blog, I complained about bad communication and poor spelling/grammar practices that I've seen creeping into society for the past 20+ years. (I forgot about the abuse of "your" and "you're". Thanks, Kathy!) An idea hit me that might help all of us with this problem. Many misused words can be spotted and figured [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
This must be how dialects get started
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 16, 2010 at 10:47 am
Comments (0)
Or maybe this just illustrates why I like the repeatability and reliability of computer languages.
Category: Uncategorized
Preaching to the Choir's Brick Wall
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 10, 2010 at 10:58 am
Comments (1)
OK, it's a mixed metaphor. Even so, what do you do if you "get it" about parallel programming and your colleagues don't or won't? We're going to bandy a few ideas around at SC10. Will you be there?
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Tags: SC10
How to Avoid Being Pelted with Grapefruit-sized Hailstones
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 24, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Comments (0)
It's the rare occasion where I won't share some wisdom with others, especially on the topic of parallel programming. And this is not one of them. Here are some hints for success in the Intel Threading Challenge.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Intel Threading Challenge 2010: One Down, Three to Go
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 31, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Comments (0)
We've completed the first problems in the Intel Threading Challenge 2010 contest. Did you enter a solution code? If not, there's still time to get in and win the big prize.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Which comes first: parallel languages or parallel programming patterns?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 17, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Comments (4)
Maybe I'm just stating the obvious here, but I thought it was an interesting transmogrification of programming languages based on programming patterns that are utilized.
Category: Parallel Programming
What I did on my Summer vacation
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 9, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Comments (0)
I taught a few modules for the UPCRC Illinois 2010 Summer School on Multicore Programming. Here's a quick overview of what else went on during the week.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Let the Parallel Coding Resume!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 5, 2010 at 10:10 am
Comments (1)
The Intel Threading Challenge 2010 contest is launching Phase 2 on Monday, 09 AUG. Do you have the programming "chops" to compete and take home the big prize?
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Title for my next book?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 8, 2010 at 8:23 am
Comments (7)
The first rule of Parallel Programming Club is you do not talk about Parallel Programming Club.
Category: Uncategorized
Could DNA computers cure diseases?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 4, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Comments (0)
I just read a report in New Scientist online magazine entitled "DNA logic gates herald injectable computers". The article discusses work done at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, that has been able to use short strands of DNA and some other molecular machinery to create sequences that behave like logic circuits, for example "exclusive [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Let the Coding Begin!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 1, 2010 at 9:09 am
Comments (0)
We've started a new Intel Threading Challenge Programming Contest on Monday, 31 MAY. The initial phase will have two problems, with a prize for winning each. A second phase will launch in August with four problems and the chance to win a grand prize for overall performance. This year we are trying something new: 2 [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Parallel Programming Talk #77 - Charles Leiserson
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 24, 2010 at 10:15 am
Comments (0)
Welcome to Show 77 of Parallel Programming Talk originally broadcast on May 18th, 2010. On the show Clay talked with Prof. Charles Leiserson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cilk Arts) about why programmers don't get good speed up in their parallel programs. (Aaron was on vacation this week, so there's not much motion on the video [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Tags: Cilk, What If
Parallel Programming using Stone Knives and Bearskins
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 17, 2010 at 10:10 am
Comments (0)
Why are we teaching concurrency and parallel programming with such low-level languages and methods? Why aren't we using more high-level constructs that aren't as dangerous or difficult as what we have today? Good questions, but what high-level constructs?
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Across the wide Concurrency
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 17, 2010 at 9:09 am
Comments (3)
I was recently told that there are some Computer Science professors that refuse to teach with threads in support of their parallel programming curriculums. The reasons given for this practice were that threads are hard to use and there is likely something better on the horizon for parallel programming. Whether or not this story is [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Parallel Programming Talk #76 - On the Road
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 14, 2010 at 9:04 am
Comments (1)
Q: What has four thumbs and helped build a new node for the Intel Manycore Testing Lab?
A: Aaron and Clay on a special edition of Parallel Programming Talk. Watch them take on the challenge of this "dirty" job.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Tags: ParallelProgrammingTalk
The Art of Concurrency on Recommended List
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 14, 2010 at 8:50 am
Comments (2)
My book, The Art of Concurrency (O'Reilly 2009), has just been selected for Intel Corporation’s Recommended Reading List! Developers from around the world utilize the RRL to know what to read to stay abreast of new technologies. This puts me in the lofty company of such luminaries as Hennessy & Patterson, Butenhof, Stroustrup, and Reinders. [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Parallel Programming Talk #75 - Listener Questions
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 12, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Comments (1)
Welcome to Show 75 of Parallel Programming Talk originally broadcast on May 4th, 2010. On the show Clay and Aaron talked with John McHugh about the release of Intel Threading Building Blocks 3.0 and answered a Listener Question. Download Link - MP4 Video File (Large) Download Link - MP3 Audio File (Small) First The News: [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Tags: ParallelProgrammingTalk
My workstation, I say, my workstation laptop sucks!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 1, 2010 at 10:38 am
Comments (5)
Power, that is.
Category: Uncategorized
Blowing Snow and the Granularity of Parallel Computation
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 19, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Comments (9)
This winter I got tired of shovelling snow in my driveway and sidewalks. Normally we don't get too much snow all at once. Maybe an inch or less a couple of times per season. However, every once in a while, we get 4 or more inches overnight. Moving all that snow is slow and back breaking business. So, [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Will a robot be doing your job in 25 years?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 17, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Comments (4)
I don't think I'll still be working in 25 years, so I'm not too concerned about a robot taking my job. Besides, will a robot be able to write blog posts, create courseware to teach programming languages, tools, and concepts, or co-host Parallel Programming Talk every week? The claim about a robot work force comes from [...]
Category: Uncategorized
It's IBM's latest goal for demonstrating the power of massively parallel computation
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 16, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Comments (2)
What is beating human contestants on Jeopardy?
Category: Parallel Programming
iBank, uBank, we all Bank @ eBank
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 11, 2010 at 9:48 am
Comments (0)
In these tough financial times, if you've found a bank that still pays you interest on your money, what do you do if your job forces you to move away? Direct deposit can allow you to keep your account. But what do you do with paper checks?
Category: Mobility
Fire in the Cloud
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 11, 2010 at 8:09 am
Comments (2)
Researchers at Los Alamos National Labs have been putting together software to predict the course of wildfires based on terrain, weather conditions, and the burn rate of the fuel consumed by the fire itself. An online report in Miller-McCune magazine describes some of the work and the travails of Rod Linn and Michael Bradley from 2002 to today. The [...]
Category: Mobility, Parallel Programming
2009 Intel Threading Challenge: What did you think?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 1, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Comments (3)
If you participated in last year's Intel Threading Challenge contest, we want to know what you thought about it. Were the problems too easy? Were they too hard? Were they just right? Was there sufficient time to work out a solution? Did overlapping problems slow you down or make you work harder? Also, since we're [...]
Category: Events, Parallel Programming
I'm more interesting than a wet pussycat -- An Open Letter to Stephen Colbert
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 28, 2010 at 10:48 am
Comments (0)
Dear Sir Stephen: Put me on your show. Please. I'd be a great guest and I've (obviously) got a book to peddle (The Art of Concurrency). So, I'm not a political figure or Hollywood actor or a journalist with a biting exposé, but I do have a scientific background. I know that you "get" the Sciences [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
How does a Computer Engineer accessorize?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 14, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Comments (1)
Dr. Barbara Millicent Roberts has reached another crossroads in her 50-year career path. You can help her make the choice for her next vocation. But will she have the right shoes to go into that new field?
Category: Uncategorized
One pi that Soupy Sales couldn't take in the face
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 8, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Comments (2)
Would the computers aboard the USS Enterprise been able to reach this record number of digits before the Rejick "virus" was expelled?
Category: Parallel Programming
Organized by Discord, Strife, and Entropy?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 29, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Comments (1)
Hail Eris! All hail Discordia! Sort my e-mail, five tons of flax, pictures, and fnord by where it came from? Smart marketing or cunning plot for world domination?
Category: Uncategorized
A Tale of Two Covers
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 29, 2009 at 8:53 am
Comments (6)
Now, something for every aspiring スレッド猿 out there.
Category: Parallel Programming
Tags: parallel programming, The Art of Concurrency
To me, THIS is "Visual Computing"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 24, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Comments (2)
I just found out about Scratch, a graphical programming language developed by folks at the MIT Media Lab. The idea is to make programming more engaging and accessible to children and teens. Programming in Scratch is simply done by composing graphical building blocks together. The blocks are designed to only fit in ways that make syntactic [...]
Category: Academic
The Speed of Molecular Computations
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 22, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Comments (2)
I've been interested in biological systems for computation ever since the first DNA computation paper published by Adleman, "Molecular Computation Of Solutions To Combinatorial Problems," in Science (266, pp. 1021–1024; 1994) . I've even blogged about it here and here. Now researchers at the University of Kent have published a paper that calculates the limits for [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
The 2009 Intel Threading Challenge Contest roundup
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 7, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Comments (0)
The winner for the Phase 2 portion of the 2009 Intel Threading Challenge Contest has been announced. Go to the contest website for details. For this contest, we broke up the problems into two Phases. The first phase had 6 problems and ran 13 weeks from 06 APR to 03 JUL; the second phase also [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Tags: Cilk, Haskell, What If
Intel cores in 80% of TOP500
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 18, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Comments (0)
I didn't get the chance to go to the SC09 conference, but I am watching the news that's coming out of that event. One of the regular features at SC is the release of the TOP500 list of most powerful computers in the world. Check out the website (www.top500.org) for the most current list and [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
It was the Roomba in the Conservatory with the Lead Pipe
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 15, 2009 at 9:58 am
Comments (1)
A study conducted at the University of Washington has found that home robots may be a security and privacy leak for their owners. The authors of the study point out that it is not the case where intelligent robots will throw off their shackles and attack their owners. It's a situation that some robots on [...]
Category: Uncategorized
CLRS III: Extension of the Threads
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 8, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Comments (1)
Last night I got a birthday gift from my wife that practically every computer programming nerd would want from their significant other. That's right, I got a copy of CLRS 3!
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Tags: Cilk, What If
Georgia Tech program to promote computing
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 7, 2009 at 11:45 am
Comments (0)
I just read an article about an NSF grant to continue and expand the Georgia Computes! program. (My state has gotten funding to start a similar program.) The program is seeking to broaden the appeal of pursuing CS degrees especially among girls and women, minorities, and persons with disabilities across the state of Georgia. The [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
My IDF 2009 Highlights
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 6, 2009 at 8:33 am
Comments (1)
Like many Intel folks, I attended the recent Intel Developer Forum. There's been lots of ink and pixels devoted to touting all the announcements and cool upcoming technology things that were demoed during the conference. Rather than rehash all that again, I want to recognize two events that may not have gotten much (if any) [...]
Category: Academic, Site News & Announcements
I'm not as "hip" as I think I am
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 30, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Comments (0)
My thoughts on e-books have been expressed about a year ago. Even so, I'm not a complete ignoramus about the topic. I don't think that my (selective) ludditious leanings have anything to do with the embarrassing blind-spot in my pop culture knowledge and reasoning skills. I was watching an episode of Dollhouse from last season with [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Psychohistory - now there's a Killer App for multi-core
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 29, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Comments (2)
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - Kay, Men in Black
Category: Parallel Programming
Read My Lips
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 15, 2009 at 8:57 am
Comments (1)
A press release from the University of East Anglia announces the publication of a paper on the findings of a research project involving a head-to-head match-up between "a machine-based lip-reading system with that of 19 human lip-readers." The upsohot of the research will lead to improved methods of teaching people to be lip-readers. All great [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Three New Laws of Robotics
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 28, 2009 at 10:15 am
Comments (3)
I think robots, especially as imagined in SF, are going to be a major consumer of multi-core processors and parallel programming. Isaac Asimov laid down three laws that were built into the brains of his fictional robots. Two university professors have put forth an update of those laws that recognizes the human-robot interaction.
Category: Uncategorized
When Should a Computer Lie?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 27, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Comments (4)
This is a philosophical question that I've had in mind for many years now. Is there a situation in which you want a computer to lie or give you incorrect answers? While the cited article doesn't answer the question totally, it does give a situation when a little bending of the truth from your computer would be welcome.
Category: Academic, Game Development
Where the deuce does all the waste go?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 25, 2009 at 9:35 am
Comments (1)
I have it on good authority that everyone excretes waste. In fact, I think someone even wrote a book about it. I was thinking about this when I was watching G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra last weekend. Specifically, I wanted to know, as the nano-mites "ate" their way through the Eiffel Tower and anything [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Designing Chips Etched from DNA?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 25, 2009 at 8:53 am
Comments (0)
While looking at the stock price for Intel this morning, I wondered what sorts of things had been in the news recently that were related to Intel's stock. One item caught my about a joint research project from IBM and Caltech. The press release on the Caltech web sitehad some of the details about using self-assembled [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Uncategorized
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 24, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Comments (0)
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Introducing Parallelism to University Faculty in Illinois
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Comments (0)
I just completed giving a two-day training course to introduce university faculty to what courseware materials are available from the Intel Academic Community. Another goal of the training is to give faculty an introduction to parallel and threaded programming the latest technology available for writing such applications. I was helped out by Jay Desouza (middle) [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Parallel Programming Talk #39 - What's new in TBB 2.2?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 17, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Comments (3)
Aaron was out of the office for the show, so Clay Breshears and Michael Wrinn hosted the show. Download an MP3 of the show. Download link to a high quality MP4 video file of the show (about 290MB) News: Threading Challenge Update We have a winner for Challenge Prolem #5 (Knapsack Problem): "matteocilk.com" . Problem [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Tags: ParallelProgrammingTalk
Where were you at 12:34:56 7/8/9?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 9, 2009 at 8:38 am
Comments (3)
Of course, for my friends in Europe, the verb in the question is "will be" since this specific time is still a month away.
Category: Uncategorized
What I did during my sabbatical
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 20, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Comments (2)
Every seven years of employment Intel employees are eligible for 8 weeks of paid leave known as 'sabbatical.' I was busy during my two months off at the end of 2008.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
80-core Processor hiding In Plain Sight
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 5, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Comments (9)
Multi-core chips play the MacGuffin in an episode of In Plain Sight.
Category: Parallel Programming
Tags: multi-core
Code your Future...and win a prize!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 30, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Comments (12)
It's here!! The Intel Threading Challenge 2009 contest has been announced. Visit the official contest web page to get the details and sign up for participation. This year, we'll be running things a little quicker than we did for the previous contest. There will be two separate contests held this year. The first will start [...]
Category: Academic, Events, Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements, Software Tools
Concurrent Characters
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 26, 2009 at 9:26 am
Comments (4)
For my monthly SF book discussion group, we just finished Frank Beddor's The Looking Glass Wars. This is a Young Adult fantasy novel that does a reimagining of the classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. In Beddor's work, seven-year old Princess Alyss Heart is forced to flee from [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Robots and the Changing Face of War
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 16, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Comments (1)
I used to watch a BBC import late on Saturday nights called "Robot Wars." Little chainsaw-wielding, mace-spinning, hammer-bashing radio controlled vehicles would run around an arena and try to incapacitate each other. The one left running was the winner. I flashed back to this show as I was reading a CNET interview with P. W. Singer, author of Wired for War: [...]
Category: Uncategorized
1000 Universities - A Big Blowout and I missed the party
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 16, 2009 at 8:22 am
Comments (1)
All the ballons have been popped, the champagne has gone flat and evaporated, and all the funny hats and confetti have been put in the recycling bins. While two weeks may be a record for "fashionably late," I still wanted to add my nickel's worth to recognizing the Intel Academic Community for reaching this milestone.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Parallel Programming Talk Radio Show 10 MAR 09 - Michael Mallen of Virutal Parallel Systems
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 11, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Comments (1)
My first shot at showing how grown up I've become by running the show all by myself and I get sideswiped by the US Congress. Daylight Savings Time started on 08 MAR in America as federally mandated. However, the show's broadcast time is synchronized with GMT, so the live broadcast was held at 9am PDT [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Tags: ParallelProgrammingTalk
UPCRC Illinois Summit - 12 FEB 2009
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 24, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Comments (0)
I was able to attend the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center (UPCRC) Illinois Summit meeting on 12 FEB 2009. This was a progress report of various research projects that are going on with faculty and students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It's been about a year since the UPCRC program was initiated with grant [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Parallel Languages Workshop at UIUC - 11 FEB 2009
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 18, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Comments (0)
On 11 FEB 2009, the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center (UPCRC) at the University of Illinois held a Languages Workshop. The goal of this day-long conference was to present and discuss "the most important issues today in parallel programming language design." The format of the conference was a moderated panel discussion for each of four topics. [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
I don't know why I let this stuff bug me
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 9, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Comments (9)
I was employed by them before I came to Intel, so I know Rice University has a lot of smart people. With the announcement of the new PCMOS chip technology, I'm beginning to have some second thoughts, though.
Category: Uncategorized
Reading the Electronic Fine Print
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 9, 2009 at 8:02 am
Comments (5)
A NY Times story announces that Google and Amazon have plans to bring electronic books, that they already make available, to your mobile phone or other device. For Google this is a set of 1.5 million public domain texts; for Amazon it is part of their Kindle library. If you don't know already, I'm not all [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Dipsy, Po, and Tinky-Winky say, "Again! Again!"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 6, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Comments (2)
I've got an old barn. Tonya's got some costumes. Aaron can play the guitar. Diana can sing. Let's put on a show!! No? Okay, how about another Threaded Programming Contest?
Category: Academic, Events, Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Pulling my head out of the Cloud Computing
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 4, 2009 at 11:04 am
Comments (4)
To calm my offended sensibilities, I turn to RBaaS (Ranting Blog as a Service).
Category: Parallel Programming
Three words: Liquid-Cooled. Personal. Supercomputer.
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 27, 2009 at 10:42 am
Comments (2)
An internal company news article has alerted me to the existence of the Reactor gaming system from Hardcore Computer. It was billed as the first liquid-cooled personal supercomputer. That's right, the whole thing sits in a mineral oil bath with the coolant running through at a rate of 2.5 gallons per minute. This is no [...]
Category: Game Development, Parallel Programming
Mobile Phone Malware - Who'da Thunk it?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 26, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Comments (0)
I saw an article on mobile worm threats to mobile phones on zdnet.com. Having recently seen Dale Taylor's posting about useful iPhone applications, I'm wondering when the mobile community will be plagued to the degree that the desktop/laptop crowd is. The ZDNet article reports that the phone worms are only stealing phone time credits. There [...]
Category: Uncategorized
How to Lose 25 Pounds, Compute Molecular Protein Folding, and Save the Planet
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 22, 2009 at 8:46 am
Comments (6)
This is something that I need. If you've seen me in person or a picture of me or one of my recent video presentations in the Intel Take Five collection, you know that I could stand to lose a few pounds. (As much as I might want to tell you there were 9 cameras used [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Top 25 Computer Programming Errors Identified
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 21, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Comments (5)
More devious than Al Capone. More despicable than Baby Face Nelson. Less dimwitted than Rocky and Mugsy. The list of the 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors is out.
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
More cores, slower computations
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 19, 2009 at 8:12 am
Comments (3)
Sandia National Labs researchers have run simulations to determine that multi-core chips get improved performance up to four cores on the supercomputing kernels that were used. Beyond four, performance starts to get worse. The culprit? It's simpler than figuring out Miss Scarlet in the Conservatory with a Knife.
Category: Parallel Programming
It's a Pattern! It's an Algorithm! It's a Dessert Topping!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 16, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Comments (4)
I was asked about what the difference was between a (parallel) programming pattern and an algorithm. If you've read Patterns for Parallel Programming and Introduction to Algorithms (aka CLRS), you know the answer. I'd be willing to bet that anyone even merely interested in object-oriented programming has at least heard of Design Patterns, and they probably [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
How Mature is Computer Science?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 15, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Comments (14)
Has teaching Computer Science become routine? If we haven't created any new basic algorithms or data structures, can undergraduate CS faculty just kick back and "phone it in"? Would I be writing this blog if the answer to either of the previous questions was "Yes"?
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Video Lecture Series: Three Things You Must Teach
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 19, 2008 at 8:30 am
Comments (2)
Back in June 2008 I was challenged by my manager to come up with three things everyone needs to know (or should be taught) about concurrent and parallel programming. I've gone one better and put together a short video lecture series on those three things.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Playing with Toys (for Concurrency Education)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 18, 2008 at 10:47 am
Comments (3)
I was too old for "The Electric Company" to teach me reading, but I still enjoyed watching the show for all the humor and inventive skits that were put on. I could see how that approach would be very motivating to get a lesson across. I'd had an idea for a set of video shorts [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
What is so Hard About Parallel Programming?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 17, 2008 at 10:34 am
Comments (18)
Not a rhetorical question! Not a dream! Not an imaginary story! Not Barbie™ run amuck! Not (I hope) an exercise in futility. Is parallel programming really "hard" or is someone trying to sell you something when they make such claims?
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Tags: bestofisn
Let's ONLY Teach Parallel Programming
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 8, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Comments (2)
If I teach you how to raise the sails, adjust a sail direction for the wind, and keep your head down when the boom swings across the boat, you can sail a small craft. You're not ready to race for the America's Cup, but you are on your way. Couldn't we take a similar tack for parallel programming education?
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Why I will never own an electronic book
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 4, 2008 at 8:43 am
Comments (14)
Products like the Kindle from Amazon.com and Sony Reader are becoming more readily available, cheaper and more popular. I will never buy one and if you gave me one as a gift I would likely prop up a shorter table leg. If you want to know what I find so repellant about this technology, read this.
Category: Uncategorized
Tags: bestofisn
Parallelized with Fear?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 27, 2008 at 10:13 am
Comments (0)
Someone's been reading and watching too much SF. I hope it's just me.
Category: Parallel Programming
Let's NOT Teach Parallel Programming
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 20, 2008 at 10:03 am
Comments (5)
It not the answer to the Life, the Universe, and Everything. However, by flipping the problem of teaching parallel programming around, we can play to the strengths of professors and students and avoid the long drawn out debates on what is the best way to write concurrent applications.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
"Vanilla is the Absence of Chocolate" and Other Lies My Father Told Me
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 22, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Comments (3)
Well, my father didn't state it that eloquently, but he couldn't understand why I prefered vanilla to chocolate milkshakes when I was growing up. Now, I don't think he would understand why I might tell someone to use a sub-optimal algorithm in their application to get better performance.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Something Serial This Way Comes
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 17, 2008 at 8:25 am
Comments (2)
Don't put your copy of Gerber's The Software Optimization Cookbook on eBay just yet. After you parallelize your applications, the serial code that remains may come back to bite you on the you-know-where.
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Serial Programming is Dead! Long Live...uh...serial programming?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 2, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Comments (2)
I guess paraphrasing some standard quotes just doesn't work everytime. Still, if serial programming is "dead", why is there still so much of it around and why is an eminent CS professor still concerned about it? And what impact will today's serial programming have on tomorrow's parallel code?
Category: Parallel Programming
Three Things You Need to Teach About Parallel Programming
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 19, 2008 at 9:35 am
Comments (10)
I was presented with a challenge the other day. The question was, "What three things do you think must be taught about parallelism in universities, such that, by not teaching these three things professors would be doing a disservice to their students?" A further restriction put on this question was that each topic could only take half an [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Programming
Applecore! Baltimore! Who's your friend? Snow Leopard!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 12, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Comments (3)
The recent Snow Leopard OS announcement from Apple and Steve Jobs, especially the vagueness surrounding the parallel programming technology, code-named "Grand Central", has put me in mind of Gwendolen's line from The Importance of Being Earnest: "This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."
Category: Parallel Programming
But can they get a job at IHOP?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 21, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Comments (0)
Even if we ignore the obvious health issues, I'm not sure how E. coli bacteria could even hold a spatula to flip pancakes. And then there would be the whole question of putting together the rest of the Grand Slam Breakfast. Fortunately these plucky germs only have to deal with mathematical stacks of pancakes.
Category: Parallel Programming
Hop, Skip, and a Jump to understanding my French teacher
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 7, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Comments (0)
Dans mon dernier poteau j'ai accentué des efforts de construire un traducteur automatique de langue. Maintenant, j'ai constaté qu'il y a un projet semblable étant placé dans l'union européenne (EU). TC-STAR le premier rôle est concentré sur pouvoir traduire automatiquement le discours dans une des 23 langues officielles d'EU au discours dans un des autres. (Translation by Babel Fish.)
Category: Parallel Programming
I'll finally be able to understand my French teacher
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 23, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Comments (0)
The Enterprise was equipped with one, even though every alien race that Captain Kirk met spoke English. The Priest-Kings of Gor used one. The TARDIS gave the Doctor and anyone else riding along the ability to do it. Is a universal langauge translator possible? A Berkeley professor thinks so.
Category: Parallel Programming
Disk is the New RAM?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 18, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Comments (6)
In a past post, I've questioned how we are expecting to "feed" the ever-growing number of cores with data. In the April 2008 issue of Communications of the ACM, Daniel Kunkle and Gene Copperman (yes, those Northeastern University researchers that have recently been computing Rubik's Cube solutions) may have come up with part of the solution. The [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
How do you represent "icon" as an icon?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 26, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Comments (3)
If you were illiterate, how would you interact with a computer? Some folks at Microsoft have been addressing that issue with a project in Bangalore, India. A Computerworld article describes some of the ideas and problems that a team of researchers have experienced with trying to allow users that cannot read or write (including about 50% [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Brain and brain! What is "brain"?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 20, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Comments (1)
Why does the media keep treating us like Eymorgs? In today's technologically advanced world, I think we're smart enough to know what a CPU is for and what it does.
Category: Parallel Programming
Stupid DNA Tricks
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 20, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Comments (0)
I feel that I should have titled this with "GDC" so it wouldn't get lost in all the other reports from there that have been posted this week.
Category: Uncategorized
NSF hopes to repeal Moore's Law
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 15, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Comments (0)
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has asked for $20 million for funding research into alternatives to current silicon technology. Infoworld reports that promising technologies such as carbon nanotubes and quantum computing would be the recipients of the proposed "Science and Engineering Beyond Moore's Law" program in fiscal 2009. Michael Foster, division director of computing and [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
When Quad-core Processors Rented the Earth
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 12, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Comments (6)
I wrote about the use or non-use of processors with more than four cores about a year ago. Now that quad-core processors are becoming available and we have a name for processors with more than eight cores (many-core), two UIUC professors, Joseph Sloan and Rakesh Kumar, have written a treatise on the economics of many-core computing. That is, [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Is Data Parallelism in our future?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 7, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Comments (2)
I was in Beaverton, OR, last week attending an internal Intel briefing on the next big processor architecture begin developed. Since it's got more than 8 cores, we refer to it as "manycore." Since I can't say anything about the processor, I wanted talk about one of the questions that came from the presentations: What [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: CM-5, data parallel, manycore
Stalking Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 25, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Comments (4)
The second-to-last bastion of human game playing may soon be falling into the hands of computers. Artificial Intelligence is one of the great uses for multi-core processors, but is writing programs to play video games just an excuse to get research money in order to support a video game habit?
Category: Parallel Programming
I, Robot; You, Jane
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 11, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Comments (1)
This is one of the stories that I wanted to comment on a few months ago. However, no matter how squicky I felt, I was even too busy to express my utter disbelief, moral outrage, and perverse curiosity.
Category: Uncategorized
Although it's spelled wrong, my name's up in lights
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 11, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Comments (1)
I've been absent from the blogs for a few months now. Where have I been? What have I been doing? Who actually cares?
Category: Uncategorized
"I'm not going to turn on some analog faucet to drink some barbaric water!"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 7, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Comments (2)
I often find that one of my really great ideas has already been thought up by someone else. In those cases do I rarely find the implementation of that idea is just the reverse of what I had in mind.
Category: Uncategorized
Sweet Llamas of the Bahamas! How Low Can You Go?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 24, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Comments (2)
A recent on-line article in ICT Results has claims that there is an economic limit to the whole miniaturization of processor technology. The proposed limit is at 16nm or 11nm for wire width. The article assures us that it should be feasible to go beyond this limit, but it might not be practical to do so. From the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Palm-sized Supercomputer
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 23, 2007 at 8:23 am
Comments (3)
What would you do with a supercomputer that can fit in your hand? Would you use it to compute trends in the stock market, predict tomorrow's weather, calculate airflow around your vehicle? Or would you just play Halo 8?
Category: Parallel Programming
King Me! Checkers is a Draw
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 22, 2007 at 8:56 am
Comments (0)
A recent article in Science (Vol. 317, No. 5844, P. 1518) by Schaeffer, Burch, and Bjornsson, announced the completion of an 18-year study of artificial intelligence and deep tree searching. These results prove that the game of Checkers, with perfect play by both sides, is a draw. However, according to the authors, the biggest contribution was the [...]
Category: Game Development, Parallel Programming
"This is like deja vu all over again"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 28, 2007 at 8:52 am
Comments (5)
The Microsoft Task Parallel Library (TPL), part of the upcoming Parallel FX Library, gets a write-up in the October 2007 issue of MSDN Magazine. Reading through the article, I got the strange feeling that I've seen all this before.
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Worm on Steroids?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 11, 2007 at 8:37 am
Comments (0)
I've been hearing about the Storm worm and the network of machines that are infected and, to some degree, under the control of this virus. The article "Storm Worm Botnet More Powerful Than Top Supercomputers" on InformationWeek estimates that millions of computers are part of the zombie grid. One quote says that the power of [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Immersive Virtual Reality: Life as a Binary Sequence
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 7, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Comments (0)
Just one more week to go in the Reading for Multi-core contest. Have you found an example of parallel processing or multi-core processors in the books you've been reading over the Summer?
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
500 MB/s for a loaf of bread? Outrageous!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 31, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Comments (0)
Harvard scientists in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have announced the release of software, known as Tribler. This software allows the user to join a peer-to-peer video sharing network. What's different from the Tribler supported network than other video sharing networks or sites? A more centralized site, such as YouTube, has all the costs [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Parallel programming at Purdue to start with undergraduates
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 27, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Comments (0)
Purdue University has announced that it will be investigating a new program within their undergraduate computer science courses. With a three-year grant from the NSF, the project will study how and when to introduce parallel programming concepts and work as early as possible within a student's course of study. It is anticipated that the results of this [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
God and Computers
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 23, 2007 at 9:21 am
Comments (0)
I've heard of the Ghost in the Machine. I know about the Buddha-nature in a NULL pointer. But, could we find Him hiding in the bits and registers of your processor?
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
That's a lovely Erlang you have there, Mrs. Cleaver
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 15, 2007 at 8:24 am
Comments (6)
Back from India, and catching up on my email I found a blog post being circulated for comment. The post was by Graeme Burnett and can be found here. Burnett criticizes the current use of C++ within the software written and used by high finance companies, such as investment banks. His vision of the concurrent [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
South Korea Doesn't Want Nihilistic Robots
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 8, 2007 at 9:07 am
Comments (1)
Still in India and, reading through my copy of the Hindustan Times (HT) this morning, I ran across an article that reports a South Korean effort is underway to create the "world's first Robot Ethics Charter" by year's end. South Korea has set a goal to have a robot in every home by 2013. Obviously, [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Uncategorized
Don't waste your leisure time this summer! Read, enter, win!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 7, 2007 at 9:53 am
Comments (6)
A few years ago, IBM ran a commercial with Avery Brooks (Captain Sisko, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) complaining about the fact that there were no flying cars and we were all promised flying cars by that time. I'm sure many shared his consternation since we'd been reading about all this cool technology within the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Intelligent Indian Elevators
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 6, 2007 at 11:25 am
Comments (3)
While staying at the Shangri-La Hotel in New Delhi, I was riding up to my room one evening and noticed that the elevators (Otis 300VFE) were being hailed as "The Intelligent Elevator". I thought nothing of this at the time, passing it off as mere marketing hype. One morning as I waited on my colleague [...]
Category: Software Tools, Uncategorized
Microsoft appears to have got it's multi-core Shinola together
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on August 4, 2007 at 9:33 am
Comments (0)
In the digest that sends me links to interesting online tidbits, the description of a recent ZDNet blog by Mary Jo Foley, provocatively titled What will next-generation multicore apps look like?, made me think it was just going to be another expert wingeing on about the same old things wrong with the current methods of software design [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Parallel, like a Protozoa?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 24, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Comments (2)
Surprise, surprise, surprise! I actually saw an article on multi-core programming in my local newspaper. I guess it shouldn't be all that surprising since I work in Champaign, IL, home of NCSA and twin city to the birthplace of the HAL 9000 computer: Urbana, IL. We should be getting all sorts of cool technology news. The article discussed [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Stacking digital books on virtual shelves with binary load lifters
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 13, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Comments (2)
Well, I guess we've got an answer to one of my nagging questions: what can you do with an 80-core processor that doesn't involve massive amounts of linear algebra? A recent University of Chicago report on the uses of their resident 260-processor Linux-based server cluster, known as Teraport, notes several uses by academics and researchers [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
A Baker's Dozen of IT Skills
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 11, 2007 at 11:40 am
Comments (4)
Computerworld has published an article listing the 12 skills that IT departments are looking for in job candidates. Always curious about what new jobs are out there or what skills I might need to get my next job, I looked over the list that was put together by "recruiters, curriculum developers, computer science professors and other industry [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on July 5, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Comments (3)
This tickled me when I read it the other day. A report in the online Wall street Journal blows the covers off a "human computation" scheme. It seems that a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University is getting humans to assign keywords to digital images through the guise of an online game. In the game, two players try to [...]
Category: Game Development
But Here's What They Got Right...
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 29, 2007 at 8:30 am
Comments (2)
One last blog on the new prototype supercomputer announced by Prof. Uzi Vishkin and the A. James Clark School of Engineering at U Maryland and I promise I'll go on to something else. Looking for more details on the intended programming model and methods, I downloaded a slide presentationthat Dr. Vishkin gave at a panel during [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Baa PRAM Ewe
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 28, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Comments (3)
* Oh no! another one of Clay's long rants. * I was interested in the details of a new parallel programming paradigm that was being (apparently) heralded as the greatest thing since transistors. After scouring the UMIACS website of Prof. Uzi Vishkin and the XMT (eXplicit Multi-Threading) project that recently announced their first hardware prototype, [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Been There, Done That, Still Waiting for the T-Shirt
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 27, 2007 at 10:05 am
Comments (2)
Yet another pioneering effort in the attempt to bring desktop supercomputing to the masses; this time from the University of Maryland. Prof. Uzi Vishkin has announced a prototype supercomputer system with a 64 core chip and motherboard that was designed and built by researchers at the A. James Clark School of Engineering. This is pretty exciting news, [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Cube Combinatorics for Conglomerate Cores
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 27, 2007 at 8:57 am
Comments (0)
If anything, I thought I might be called on the 'yielding practical results from pure research' claims in my Rubik's Cube entry. In preparation, I was trying to think of some example. Since nothing came immediately to mind, I pondered the possibilities of finding a final solution to the minimum number of moves needed to [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Rambling and Ruminating on Rubik's Cube
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 25, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Comments (8)
Two Northeastern University researchers found that it would take no more than 26 moves to solve any randomly scrambled Rubik's Cube. This beats the previous maximum of 27 moves, which was proven back in 1997. Gene Cooperman and Dan Kunkle will present their findings at the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation in Waterloo, [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
It's nearly impossible to say "eBay" in Pig Latin
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 15, 2007 at 9:53 am
Comments (2)
I found a link to an EDN article on the future of multi-core processor design. What caught my eye was the following: While [multi-core processor design] may be a more efficient model from an energy consumption perspective, programming these devices will be so complex it will make programmers' brains hurt. Intel executives said they don't expect [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
You've got Pthreads in my Windows Vista Threads!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 1, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Comments (2)
The June 2007 issue of MSDN Magazine has an article entitled "Synchronization Primitives New in Windows Vista." The article discusses new threading features included in the Windows SDK for Windows Vista. Two of these features that piqued my curiosity were Condition Variables and One-time Initialization. (I'll let you read about the details and the uses [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
By the Hammer of Thor! What are we saying now?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on June 1, 2007 at 8:29 am
Comments (1)
In a recent CNET news article, Intel Fellow Shekhar Borkar is quoted as saying "Software has to double the amount of parallelism that it can support every two years". Huh? I'm afraid that I found this article through the critique posted on The Inquirer and must say that their evaluation is pretty spot on. To CNET's [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Anthropomorphism
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on May 29, 2007 at 8:02 am
Comments (0)
Back when I was teaching parallel programming at university, I remember getting questions along the lines of "what if the process doesn't send the message" or "what if the thread doesn't read the value." This all stemmed from the anthropomorphism we use to illustrate the interaction of inanimate objects like threads or processes. I guess [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Maybe Vin Diesel could pick up some work
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 30, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Comments (1)
If you're a follower of ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), who are in charge of the domain names used across the Internets, you may already have heard about the proposal for creating a .xxx domain reserved for pornographic material. This proposal was defeated for a third time recently. I'm not here to discuss [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Why Can't Johnny Parse an LR(1) Grammar?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on April 5, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Comments (2)
Over the past few months, there has been a bit of a hue and cry over the fact that the number of college students declaring Computer Science as their major has declined. While science degree PhDs awarded has been on the rise, the front end of the pipeline, at least for CS, is starting to [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Microsoft Dips a Toe in the Parallel Language Pool
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 15, 2007 at 8:58 am
Comments (0)
In a recent online EE Times article about the lack of incoming CS students, down at the bottom of the first page, is an acknowledgement that Microsoft is developing a parallel programming language. From the descriptions in the article, it appears that support for transactional memorywill be needed. The language has adapted database methods for agglomerating several operations [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
What to use in polite company: Speedup or Scalability?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 14, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Comments (1)
This just burns my biscuits! (No, I'm not sitting on a red hot stove like Yosemite Sam.) I can let some things go by without comment. Interchanging "concurrent" and "parallel" is a minor offense, for example. However, confusing the differences between "speedup" and "scalability" gets me smelling smoke. As a card-carrying Vocabunista (Noah Webster Chapter), I must set the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
What's Not Parallel? (#5)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 12, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Comments (1)
The final type of code that is not parallelizable is known as loop carried dependence. This is when results of a previous iteration are used in the current iteration. Typically, this situation will be evidenced by references to the same array on both the left- and right-hand sides of assignments and backward references in some [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
"A View From Berkeley" Report on Parallelism
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 7, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Comments (0)
Two items in HPCWire (the article "Our Manycore Future" and the interview transcript "Confronting Parallelism") are touting a recent UC Berkeley EECS Department technical report: The Landscape of Parallel Computing Research: A View From Berkeley. The HCPWire article claims that this report is important "not because it claims to have all the answers, but because it [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Developing New Apps: In Parallel or Serial?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on March 5, 2007 at 10:33 am
Comments (2)
With all the legacy code we have around (seems kinda funny to think about C++ apps as "legacy" code), we'll be converting serial applications to parallel versions in order for those applications to run effectively on multi-core platforms. We can add explicit threads, OpenMP pragmas, or threading libraries like Rogue Wave's Threads.h++ (is this still available?) [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
What's Not Parallel? (#4)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 27, 2007 at 11:22 am
Comments (0)
Previously on "What's not Parallel?": Julie had caught Dillon and Becky in a compromising position; Tyler was preparing to make his debut in New York; Copernicus had finally decided to publish De Revolutionibus; and Carol, having drawn the eight of hearts, was just about to go "all in" when the ducks began to thrash around [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Do We Need A(nother) Parallel Programming Language?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 23, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Comments (13)
There seems to be a lot of buzz that has been generated by the article "The Problem with Threads," by UC Berkeley Professor Edward A. Lee, which appeared in the May 2006 issue of IEEE Computer. After reading the article, this Thread Monkey agrees with the conclusions, but he's not sure how soon we might be able [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Hold on Tight! It's Going to be a Bumpy Ride
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 22, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Comments (1)
John Hennessy and David Patterson are best known for their book Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach(4th Edition, Morgan Kaufmann, 2006). At least they are in the circles that I travel. The ACM publication Queue has published an interview with these CS pioneers. There is also an MP3 version of the first half of the interview [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Memory and elephants are playing in the band
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 15, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Comments (2)
Ever since the official introduction of the Intel Teraflop chip with 80 cores (octaginta-core?), I've been wondering about how you keep all those cores fed with data. It's not such a trick to imagine what you can do with 80 cores or dream about new kinds of applications that could be brought to the desktop [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
What's the next number in this sequence: 1, 2, 4, ?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 12, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Comments (1)
It's looking like it may be 80. Cores, that is. The New York Times has an article about the upcoming announcement of the Intel Teraflop Chip with 80 cores. The article notes that there are other (specialized) chips with more cores, but this chip would seem to have the most cores for a general purpose chip intended [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Multiprocessing: What's in it for me?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 11, 2007 at 10:47 am
Comments (4)
There has been a shift in the responsibility for delivering faster performing applications. In the past, chip makers have been delivering increases in the clock speed of processors. By doing nothing, ISVs got a performance increase since the CPU executed the same instructions in a shorter amount of time. Now, the number of cores is [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Money for Nothing, Chicks for Free
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on February 5, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Comments (11)
I was reading about contests between mathematicians in the 16th Century. Specifically, I was reading about a public problem-solving contest in 1535 where Antonio Maria Fiore challenged NiccolಠTartaglia to solve 30 problems (each devised the problems to be solved by the other contestant) within 40-50 days. Tartaglia solved all 30 problems in two hours [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
What's Not Parallel? (#3)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 29, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Comments (1)
Induction variables are incremented on each trip through a loop. Most likely these are index variables that do not have a one-to-one relation with the value of the loop index variable. For example, consider the following code segment: i1 = 4; i2 = 0; for (k = 1; k < N; k++) { B[i1++] = [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Transactional Memory: What's all the hubbub, Bub?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 17, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Comments (10)
I feel like I've been bombarded by transactional memory (TM) items all last week. First I read through an article published in the DEC/JAN 2006-2007 issue of ACM Queue titled "Unlocking Concurrency." Then, I see the HPCWire article that notes even Intel is looking into incorporating TM support in future platforms. After a little TM [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
What's Not Parallel? (#2)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 5, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Comments (0)
Recurrence relations within loops feed information forward from one iteration to the next. Prime examples of this are time-stepping loops and convergence loops. No matter how many tea leaves we read or tarot cards we consult or Magic Eight Ball apps we write, we can't parse out future time steps to separate threads for concurrent [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
When Quad-core Processors Ruled the Earth
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on January 3, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Comments (11)
I've seen a web report that stated Intel will be sticking with quad-core processors for a while. If we bend Moore's Law just a tad to fit this situation, it should be another 2 years or so before we could see the advent of processors with 8 cores (octa-core? octo-core? elite 8-core?). There was a [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Haiku Odyssey
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 26, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Comments (1)
During really long and boring meetings, I've been known to write haiku to keep myself awake. It's not Wordsworth or Longfellow, but it does make it seem like I'm paying attention. I've pulled together some samples here that chart a journey. threads smirk and giggle I hear them bounce between cores; my code unravels threads [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Threading Building Blocks: Solution Looking for a Problem?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 18, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Comments (6)
I admit I just don't get it. I'm not a C++ programmer, so the preface to any response you might want to make to my criticisms and questions posed here could be "Clay, you ignorant slut!" I can accept that; I'm speaking, to some extent, from a position of ignorance. When I first heard about [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Everything I Know About Threading I Learned from TV
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 14, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Comments (0)
While my wife and I were watching House, M.D. the other night, we were doing shots of Basil Hayden's every time one of the characters said "Hi, Bob." (I must confess, we got a lot more hammered playing this game when Bob Newhart was still on the air.*) We've both been big Hugh Laurie fans [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
What's Not Parallel? (#1)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on December 12, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Comments (3)
Welcome to the first installment of "What's Not Parallel!" (You were supposed to yell out the name as you were reading, like they do at the opening of "Wheel of Fortune". Please go back and try again. Thanks.) The first example of something that is not able to be made parallel are algorithms, functions, or [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Playing Tic-Tac-Toe Against Computers
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 22, 2006 at 5:47 am
Comments (0)
The first thing that popped into my head as I sat watching the denouement of War Games was "Why is it taking so long for WOPR to exhaust all of those tic-tac-toe combinations?" I mean, there are only 362,880 (9 factorial) different games that could be played, and that counts all the games that are [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
A Field of Nails
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 20, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Comments (3)
At times it seems that Intel is playing the part of Chicken Little (from the fable, not the movie) by running around endlessly pushing the "Multithreading is necessary!" mantra. The other day, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, and I were rushing around chatting up all the advantages of threading applications to Turkey Lurkey, Goosey Poosey, and [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
You're in the Hills... Now What Do You Do?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 16, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Comments (0)
Like every other programming, threading is more of an art than a science. You have to learn what all the tools are and how to use all of them properly. From my own experience with stained glass, you have to know the different types and styles of glass, how to cut and break the glass [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
There's Threads in Them Thar Hills!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 14, 2006 at 12:10 am
Comments (5)
What's the rush? Where is it all headed? What's it all about? In 1849 they were headed to California; a few years later, it was Australia; in 1880, they were rushing North to Juneau and the Klondike. If you're reading this you either follow my writing (big shout out to my fans, both of you!) [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Pounding My Virtual Shoe on a Virtual Podium
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 10, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Comments (0)
I was seeing red all weekend a few weeks ago. Veins on my forehead were pulsing like the drum solo intro to Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher." I was having trouble getting to sleep. I've calmed down, now, but this still sticks in my craw. What had me in such a state? It was all [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
New Paradigm of Software Programming?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on November 9, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Comments (7)
Sure, paradigm is one of those "business-speak" words that was popularized in the last decade, like the Macarena and Beanie Babies. It does have entomological roots that go way back, though. The roots of computing go way back, too. If you look up "computer" in dictionaries before the turn of the 20th century, it would [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Some Concurrent Beasties
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 27, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Comments (0)
I've been busy getting things wound up so that I can take some vacation time. But I thought I'd share these quotes that a colleague recently reminded me about. The first is attributed to Seymour Cray. "If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use: two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?" Obviously, Cray [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Why Windows Threads Are Better Than POSIX Threads
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 19, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Comments (65)
I've used both POSIX threads (Pthreads) and Windows threads APIs, and I believe that Windows has the better programming model of the two. While each threading method can create threads, destroy threads, and coordinate interactions between threads, the reason I make this claim is the simplicity of use and elegance of design of the Windows [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Job Security Opportunities
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 13, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Comments (4)
It's never a good time to lose your job. Unless it turns out to be the push you need to go off and do something more worthwhile, more personally rewarding, or offers more money. At Intel, there have been reductions in the workforce over the last few months. In times like this, it's nice to [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Getting From Zero to Thread Monkey: Book Recommendations
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on October 4, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Comments (5)
I keep getting asked about what someone might do to get some background and information on multithreaded programming if they were starting from scratch. This is a list that I send out in response to this question about books I've read or have some opinioin about. (From now on when I get such a request, [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
A Rant About Bad Science
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 28, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Comments (6)
I hadn't planned to be continuously posting to this blog. I think my management would be happy with a monthly contribution. I can get behind that level of commitment. Still, when something strikes my fancy or gets my goat, this forum is just sitting here; I might as well make use of it. So, I [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
A Pod of Killer Multi-core Apps
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 27, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Comments (1)
Soon after PCs came out, business applications (word processing, spreadsheets, desktop publishing) showed the utility of these new machines and drove sales. Nothing since has made such a big splash. However, everyone still wants to know what the "killer app" will be for any new technology that seems to come down the pipe. It always [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Just what is a "thread monkey"?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (196 posts) on September 25, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Comments (9)
[Note: For those of you, like me, that don't really care for long, self-aggrandizing biographies, just skip down to the last paragraph.] Hello. My name is Clay and I'm a Thread Monkey. It's been about two weeks since I've actually written any threaded code. I guess it all started back in my first stint in [...]