Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust 573
mlimber writes "The New York Times is running a story about multicore computing and the efforts of Microsoft et al. to try to switch to the new paradigm: "The challenges [of parallel programming] have not dented the enthusiasm for the potential of the new parallel chips at Microsoft, where executives are betting that the arrival of manycore chips — processors with more than eight cores, possible as soon as 2010 — will transform the world of personal computing.... Engineers and computer scientists acknowledge that despite advances in recent decades, the computer industry is still lagging in its ability to write parallel programs." It mirrors what C++ guru and now Microsoft architect Herb Sutter has been saying in articles such as his "The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software." Sutter is part of the C++ standards committee that is working hard to make multithreading standard in C++."
2005 Called (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously - any developer writing modern desktop or server applications that doesn't know how to do multi-threaded programming effectively deserves to be on EI anyway. It is not that difficult.
M$ programmers should be already capable (Score:5, Funny)
hhooppee tthheeyy ffiixx tthhiiss ssoooonn (Score:5, Funny)
Thank god (Score:5, Funny)
Guess I had it coming.
Re:hhooppee tthheeyy ffiixx tthhiiss ssoooonn (Score:5, Funny)
YOUR eyes?! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:2005 Called (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Evolution that halted at 4 ghz.... (Score:5, Funny)
Microsofts view on cores (Score:4, Funny)
Core one: For the OS
Core two: Anti-virus
Core three: Anti-Spyware / Windows Defender
Core four: Firewall
Core five: Windows update notifications and installations
Core six: Windows Genuine advantage checks
Core seven: Eye Candy (Vista) with XP you get a bonus CPU
Core eight: What ever the user wants to run, except when you get a virus, then
you have to share it with the SPAM bot.
Guess we will be waiting for 16 core CPU's.
Oh and don't start me on memory requirements
Re:2005 Called (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Me too (Score:1, Funny)
Re:2005 Called (Score:3, Funny)
seriously though, it was only a few years ago that people were scoffing at the usefulness of dual processor desktop machines and arguing the value of being able to run multi-threaded apps and multiple apps faster at the expense of poorer performance on the vast majority of apps and games which people were running in isolation. it doesn't seem like applications or operating systems have seen a major overhaul since that time (just incremental gains), but the enthusiasm with which they're piling on more and more cores has drowned out all the questions people had. i think this has more to do with chip marketers needing to be able to trumpet something with great excitement than actual newfound utility of multiprocessing