
New Processors Present Problems, Payoff - bootload
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/T/TOO_FAST_COMPUTERS
======
BrandonM
Isn't this old news? I thought everyone knew that we were moving towards more
processors instead of faster processors.

One quote that I didn't particularly like, "You can imagine a scenario where
people stop buying laptops and PCs because we can't figure this out." Yeah,
I'm sure _that_ is going to happen. All it means is that new ambitious groups
of people have a good chance of entering the market against entrenched
competitors who do not go with a parallel design.

They also mention, "...operating systems like Windows XP and Vista already
work with the multicore chips out now," as if Windows is the only one that
does. Linux and BSD systems (among others) have been working with multiple
processors since long before Windows even considered the idea of having
multiple users.

Overall, I wasn't impressed with the reporting. I think it's partly uninformed
(failing to recognize the history and present-day of SMP systems and
programs), sensationalist (declaring impending doom when there's really no
chance of it), and quite late (I thought people had been considering SMP for a
while now).

I'm also disappointed in the guy they're quoting (David Patterson from
Berkeley), who appears to be out of touch with what is going on in the
software world. He says, "We need to get some Manhattan Projects going here -
somebody could solve this problem, and whoever solves this problem could have
this gigantic advantage on everybody else." From my perspective, Erlang and
several functional languages already "solve this problem" quite well, and
there is a slew of multi-processor programs out there already which seem to be
doing quite fine.

Am I missing something here?

~~~
mark-t
I had the same feelings about this being old news. Also, it doesn't actually
tell me anything useful.

I don't think having the problem solved in Erlang and functional languages is
even close to enough, though. No offense, but there just aren't a lot of
people using them. I think something like
<http://threadingbuildingblocks.org/> (Intel's open source C++ threading
building blocks library) would be more along the lines of a real solution.

------
mark-t
The link above redirects me to an Associated Press page.
[http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/T/TOO_FAST_COMPUTERS?S...](http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/T/TOO_FAST_COMPUTERS?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT)
works for me, though. Perhaps I'll comment after I read it, but I thought I
should add this for now.

