Archive for September 2008
Why Lazy Functional Programming Languages are Good for Multicore
Posted on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 11:25 AM by Malcolm
In this article, Peyton-Jones describes his interest in lazy functional programming languages, and chats about their increasing relevance in a world with rapidly increasing multi-core CPUs and clusters. "I think Haskell is increasingly well placed for this multi-core stuff, as I think people are increasingly going to look to languages like Haskell and say 'oh, that's where we can get some good ideas at least', whether or not it's the actual language or concrete syntax that they adopt.'"
Edited on: Saturday, September 20, 2008 11:27 AM
Posted in General (RSS), HPC (RSS)
CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses
Posted on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 11:22 AM by Malcolm
This series of articles introduces the power of CUDA -- through working code -- and to the thought process to help programmers map applications onto multi-threaded hardware (such as GPUs) to get big performance increases. Of course, not all problems can be mapped efficiently onto multi-threaded hardware, so part of the thought process will be to distinguish what will and what won't work, plus provide a common-sense idea of what might work "well-enough".
- CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 1
- CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 2
- CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 3
- CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 4
- CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 5
- CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 6
- CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 7
- CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 8
Edited on: Saturday, September 20, 2008 11:27 AM
Stanford frees CS, robotics courses
Posted on Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 11:02 AM by Malcolm
Stanford University will soon begin offering a series of 10 free, online computer science and electrical engineering courses. Initial courses will provide an introduction to computer science and an introduction to field of robotics, among other topics. The courses, offered under the auspices of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), are nearly identical to standard courses offered to registered Stanford students and will comprise downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts.
Edited on: Saturday, September 20, 2008 11:26 AM
9 Reusable Parallel Data Structures and Algorithms
Posted on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 9:36 AM by Malcolm
This article looks at nine reusable data structures and algorithms that are common to many parallel programs. Each example is accompanied by fully working, though not completely hardened, tested, and tuned, code. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it represents some of the more common patterns. Many of the examples build on each other.
Edited on: Thursday, September 18, 2008 12:08 AM
How Videogames Blind Us With Science
Posted on Monday, September 08, 2008 at 2:17 PM by Malcolm
Kids who are turning away from Science are actually applying scientific reasoning to analyze videogames.
From the article:
"they were pretty good at figuring out how to defeat the bosses. One day she
found out why. A group of them were building Excel spreadsheets into which they'd dump all the
information they'd gathered about how each boss behaved: What potions affected it, what attacks
it would use, with what damage, and when. Then they'd develop a mathematical model to explain
how the boss worked -- and to predict how to beat it."
Posted in General (RSS), Science (RSS)
Lifelike Animation
Posted on Saturday, September 06, 2008 at 12:53 PM by Malcolm
From the story: "The woman above is not real. I mean, she was real once, when real actress Emily O'Brien provided Image Metrics (you know their work from GTAIV) with 35 facial poses in front of a pair of digital cameras. From there, O'Brien was dismissed so the animators could go to work. Apparently "ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real." And the results, while not always perfect, are pretty extraordinary."
Edited on: Saturday, September 06, 2008 4:48 PM
Posted in General (RSS), Tech (RSS)
Parallel Programming Made Easy
Posted on Saturday, September 06, 2008 at 12:34 PM by Malcolm
Michael Wolfe from Protland Group looks at all the current research projects aimed at making parallel programming easy. He has this to say "Every time I see someone claiming they've come up with a method to make parallel programming easy, I can't take them seriously. First, making parallel programming easy must be harder than making programming easy, and I don't think we've reached that first milestone yet."Edited on: Saturday, September 06, 2008 12:36 PM
Online course on multi-core performance from NCSA
Posted on Thursday, September 04, 2008 at 9:30 AM by Malcolm
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is offering a new Web-based course, "Introduction to Multi-core Performance." This tutorial helps current and prospective users of multi-core systems understand and use the technology to accelerate their research. Multi-core processors, which hold the promise of enhanced performance and more efficient parallel processing, are a key stepping stone on the path to petascale computation. Applications that run on multi-core systems must be optimized to take full advantage of the improved performance offered by multi-core technology. To browse the course catalog, go to ci-tutor.ncsa.uiuc.edu/browse.php . To create a login and take a course, go to ci-tutor.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ .Edited on: Thursday, September 04, 2008 10:42 AM
Posted in General (RSS), HPC (RSS)
Google Browser: Google Chrome
Posted on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 at 11:18 AM by Malcolm
Google will be launching a new opensource browser, Google Chrome. The news was accidently leaked when a copy of the comic book describing the browser was released.
Edited on: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 12:46 PM
