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Posts from Clay Breshears (Intel) 
 |
Clay Breshears is a self-admitted Thread Monkey. He has been with Intel since September 2000. He started as a Senior Parallel Application Engineer at the Intel Parallel Applications Center in Champaign, IL, implementing multithreaded and distributed solutions in customer applications. Clay is currently a Content Concierge for the Intel Developer Network Organization, specializing in multi-core and multithreaded programming and training. He is also the author of "The Art of Concurrency" published by O'Reilly Press in May 2009. Clay received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee, in 1996, 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. |
It was the Roomba in the Conservatory with the Lead Pipe
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 posts) on October 8, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Comments (3)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Georgia Tech program to promote computing
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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. [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
My IDF 2009 Highlights
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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, Intel® Software Network 2.0
I'm not as "hip" as I think I am
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 my [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Psychohistory - now there's a Killer App for multi-core
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Read My Lips
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on September 15, 2009 at 8:57 am
Comments (3)
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. [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Three New Laws of Robotics
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on August 28, 2009 at 10:15 am
Comments (6)
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) (123 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, Gaming
Where the deuce does all the waste go?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Uncategorized
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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, Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Introducing Parallelism to University Faculty in Illinois
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Parallel Programming Talk #39 - What's new in TBB 2.2?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 #6 winner [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Where were you at 12:34:56 7/8/9?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 posts) on May 20, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Comments (1)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
80-core Processor hiding In Plain Sight
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on May 5, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Comments (6)
Multi-core chips play the MacGuffin in an episode of In Plain Sight.
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Code your Future...and win a prize!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 with [...]
Category: Academic, Events, Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering
Concurrent Characters
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Robots and the Changing Face of War
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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: The [...]
Category: Uncategorized
1000 Universities - A Big Blowout and I missed the party
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Parallel Programming Talk Radio Show 10 MAR 09 - Michael Mallen of Virutal Parallel Systems
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
UPCRC Illinois Summit - 12 FEB 2009
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Parallel Languages Workshop at UIUC - 11 FEB 2009
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering
I don't know why I let this stuff bug me
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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) (123 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, Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Pulling my head out of the Cloud Computing
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Three words: Liquid-Cooled. Personal. Supercomputer.
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 mere [...]
Category: Gaming, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Mobile Phone Malware - Who'da Thunk it?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Top 25 Computer Programming Errors Identified
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on January 21, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Comments (4)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering
More cores, slower computations
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
It's a Pattern! It's an Algorithm! It's a Dessert Topping!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering
How Mature is Computer Science?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on January 15, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Comments (9)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Video Lecture Series: Three Things You Must Teach
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on December 19, 2008 at 8:30 am
Comments (1)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Playing with Toys (for Concurrency Education)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 that [...]
Category: Academic, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
What is so Hard About Parallel Programming?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Let's ONLY Teach Parallel Programming
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Why I will never own an electronic book
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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
Parallelized with Fear?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Let's NOT Teach Parallel Programming
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering
"Vanilla is the Absence of Chocolate" and Other Lies My Father Told Me
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering
Something Serial This Way Comes
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering
Serial Programming is Dead! Long Live...uh...serial programming?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Three Things You Need to Teach About Parallel Programming
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Applecore! Baltimore! Who's your friend? Snow Leopard!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
But can they get a job at IHOP?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Hop, Skip, and a Jump to understanding my French teacher
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
I'll finally be able to understand my French teacher
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Disk is the New RAM?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
How do you represent "icon" as an icon?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Stupid DNA Tricks
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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 communication [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
When Quad-core Processors Rented the Earth
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Is Data Parallelism in our future?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Threading Building Blocks
Stalking Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
I, Robot; You, Jane
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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) (123 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) (123 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 Intel [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Palm-sized Supercomputer
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
King Me! Checkers is a Draw
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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: Gaming, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
"This is like deja vu all over again"
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Threading Building Blocks
Worm on Steroids?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
500 MB/s for a loaf of bread? Outrageous!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
God and Computers
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
That's a lovely Erlang you have there, Mrs. Cleaver
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
South Korea Doesn't Want Nihilistic Robots
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Uncategorized
Don't waste your leisure time this summer! Read, enter, win!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Intelligent Indian Elevators
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 to [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Uncategorized
Microsoft appears to have got it's multi-core Shinola together
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Parallel, like a Protozoa?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 a proposed [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Stacking digital books on virtual shelves with binary load lifters
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
A Baker's Dozen of IT Skills
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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: Gaming
But Here's What They Got Right...
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 the [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Baa PRAM Ewe
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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, I [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Been There, Done That, Still Waiting for the T-Shirt
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Cube Combinatorics for Conglomerate Cores
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Rambling and Ruminating on Rubik's Cube
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
It's nearly impossible to say "eBay" in Pig Latin
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 a [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
You've got Pthreads in my Windows Vista Threads!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
By the Hammer of Thor! What are we saying now?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 credit, [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Anthropomorphism
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering
Maybe Vin Diesel could pick up some work
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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) (123 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) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
What to use in polite company: Speedup or Scalability?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
What's Not Parallel? (#5)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
"A View From Berkeley" Report on Parallelism
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Developing New Apps: In Parallel or Serial?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
What's Not Parallel? (#4)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Do We Need A(nother) Parallel Programming Language?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Hold on Tight! It's Going to be a Bumpy Ride
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 that [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Memory and elephants are playing in the band
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on February 15, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Comments (1)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
What's the next number in this sequence: 1, 2, 4, ?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on February 12, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Comments (0)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Multiprocessing: What's in it for me?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on February 11, 2007 at 10:47 am
Comments (0)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Money for Nothing, Chicks for Free
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on February 5, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Comments (9)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
What's Not Parallel? (#3)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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++] = function1(k,q,r); i2 += k; A[i2] = [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Transactional Memory: What's all the hubbub, Bub?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on January 17, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Comments (8)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
What's Not Parallel? (#2)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
When Quad-core Processors Ruled the Earth
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Haiku Odyssey
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 weave in and out updating [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Threading Building Blocks: Solution Looking for a Problem?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on December 18, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Comments (5)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Everything I Know About Threading I Learned from TV
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
What's Not Parallel? (#1)
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on December 12, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Comments (2)
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 procedures [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Playing Tic-Tac-Toe Against Computers
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
A Field of Nails
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
You're in the Hills... Now What Do You Do?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
There's Threads in Them Thar Hills!
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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!) or [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Pounding My Virtual Shoe on a Virtual Podium
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 due [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
New Paradigm of Software Programming?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 [...]
Category: Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core
Some Concurrent Beasties
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Why Windows Threads Are Better Than POSIX Threads
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 posts) on October 19, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Comments (62)
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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Job Security Opportunities
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Getting From Zero to Thread Monkey: Book Recommendations
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
A Rant About Bad Science
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
A Pod of Killer Multi-core Apps
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 Prog. & Multi-Core
Just what is a "thread monkey"?
By Clay Breshears (Intel) (123 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 grad school. One [...]