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Archives
Posts from David Mackay (Intel) 
 |
I joined Intel in 1992 after completing my Ph.D. at Stanford. I have been working on parallel computing and performance during my entire career at Intel. I now manage a consulting team for our software products. I began in the Supercomputer Systems Division and also worked in the ISV Performance Lab. |
Software Tool Talk!
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on February 10, 2012 at 6:38 pm
Comments (0)
Hello everyone, Where do you go to learn about the features of Intel Software Development Products? Soon the answer to this question will be Tool Talk. Let me tell you about a new program we are starting. We are creating a new video series called Tool Talk. I will host these episodes. Each segment will be about 10 minutes long. I [...]
Category: Uncategorized
XE - Time to start talking more about Intel® Parallel Studio XE 2011
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on May 12, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Comments (0)
Spring is here and it is well past time for me to get back to the blog page and start sharing ideas and notes. I have been thinking about a new series of blogs and it is time to start writing them. This new series should be a lot of fun. I plan to write [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Performance Analysis of Threading Building Blocks
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on May 10, 2011 at 6:27 am
Comments (0)
Intel® Threading Building Blocks (TBB) is a popular abstraction for expressing parallelism in C++ software. The Threading Building Blocks lead to good decomposition for threading. But do you know how to check how well it is tuned, so you use Threading Building Blocks most effectively. Today Douglas Armstrong, Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE architect, joins me [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Parallel Programming with Intel and Microsoft
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on September 15, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Comments (0)
Intel is combining with Microsoft to teach a short course (1 day) on parallel programming. Click here to register for the course. This is your chance to register and attend. Last year I piloted a new course year and we visited four citiies to teach the class in the first half of 2010. The class [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Parallel Studio contest - All the fun without the roadtrip
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on June 8, 2010 at 11:00 am
Comments (1)
Every year my parents would load up the car and we would head out on vacation. Invariably I or my siblings would ask "are we there yet?" One game we played to pass the time and avoid the incessant "are we there yet?" question was 20 questions. This summer we are going to bring you [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Tune Up Your Code For Performance
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on January 28, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Comments (0)
A couple of weeks ago I wrote an blog about a couple of web seminars about improving the quality of your software - removing memory errors and data races using Intel(r) Parallel Inspector. Today I want to encourage you to attend an MSDN web seminar about software performance tuning. Vasanth Tovinkere, one of the software engineers on [...]
Category: Game Development, Intel SW Partner Program, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: parallel programming, parallelism, performance, Threading Building Blocks
Parallelism and threading training
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on January 19, 2010 at 10:52 am
Comments (0)
The courses are rolling out. Windows C++ developers register now! Intel is offering a one day course on threading and parallelism! Last year I taught a pilot class on threading and parallelism. We had great reviews from those who attended this pilot course. In the post pilot class survey 100% of attendees said they would recommend the course to their peers. We [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: intel threading, Multicore Parallel Programming, parallel programming, parallelism, TBB, Threading Building Blocks
Improving Software quality - checking for memory errors and thread data races
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on January 13, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Comments (1)
In December I had fun participating in a couple of web seminars about a product for finding common memory errors as well as thread deadlocks and data races: Intel Parallel Inspector. Many of you might have missed these so let me tell you about them. The first web seminar was one I got to present [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: C++, DataParallel, parallel programming, parallelism, TBB, Threading Building Blocks
Fun with Locks and Waits - Performance Tuning
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on December 23, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Comments (2)
Intel Parallel Amplifier can help identify which synch objects impact performance the most. The Locks and Waits analysis pinpoints synch objects that cause threads to wait and lists them in descending order.
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: parallel programming, parallelism, software, TBB, Threading Building Blocks
Software without Memory errors and data races
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on December 7, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Comments (1)
This year we launched intel Parallel Studio. Intel Parallel Studio is designed to improve the productivity and help the Visual C++ developer create good threaded software that scales. It includes components that help express parallelism (Intel Threading Building Blocks), performance libraries, as well as tuning and correctness checking software. Intel Parallel Inspector checks for both [...]
Category: Events, Intel SW Partner Program, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: TBB
Event Based Sampling - are you ready?
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on September 30, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Comments (0)
Event based sampling uses counters on the Intel processors to detect what your software is doing. This is helpful for tuning and improving software performance. Typical hotspot analysis shows you where your software spends most of the execution time, but event based sampling allows you to see not just what sections of your application take [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: Core i7 optimization performance analysis, event based sampling, Nehalem, VTune, What If
Learn parallelism and Threading – opportunity to attend Pilot class for FREE!
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on June 4, 2009 at 7:28 am
Comments (0)
We created a new one day course on parallelism and threading. This is a great opportunity to learn about threading software for multi-core platforms. This course is targeted for Windows* C++ developers using Microsoft Visual Studio* 2005 or 2008. If you are in that category keep reading! The performance benefits on modern computing platforms will [...]
Category: Events, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: multi-core, TBB, thread, threading
Quick Intel® Core™ i7 platform tuning
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on February 23, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Comments (5)
I hope you are all enjoying the new Intel® Core™i7 platforms. Most people are very pleased with the performance of these new platforms. I hope all of you software developers are regular VTune Analyzers users too (but I know not all of you are). One of the great advantages of VTune Analyzer’s event based sampling [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: i7, Nehalem, performance, TBB, VTune
Correctness and Threading
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on November 17, 2008 at 10:35 am
Comments (1)
We have often stated the three main points of parallelism are: Correctness, Scalability, and Maintainability. We are working to provide better tools to improve all three aspects of software development. The other month I wrote about Intel Threading Building Blocks which helps provide an abstraction that helps with both maintainability and scalability. I wonder how [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: TBB
TBB is part of the concurrency revolution
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on September 19, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Comments (3)
In my first blog that I said I would blog mostly about threading and performance. This time I am writing about TBB or Intel® Threading Building Blocks. But let me begin by discussing the multi-core transition. Several years ago Intel began shifting to multi-core platforms. This was a shift for Intel (you may remember we [...]
Category: Open Source, Parallel Programming, Software Tools
Tags: TBB
Performance, Analysis, Threading and Intel Developer Forum
By David Mackay (Intel) (16 posts) on August 11, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Comments (0)
Performance, Analysis, Threading and Intel Developer Forum - What do all these have in common? Keep reading and I will answer this in my blog. First let me introduce myself. I joined Intel back in 1992. In my years at Intel I have always been interested in parallel programming and parallel computing. My first position [...]