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Re: Transputer Development System, 2006? (aka Sony PS/3 runs multi-core Linux)
Kevin,
It probably says nothing about Intel's views on parallel development.
Intel's business is selling chips and if they can offer even slightly more
performance for no more effort from customers (keep the same software) they
will achieve their goal.
Even great gains in performance that include re-development of software
(whether easy or not, anything is more effort than nothing) are more
difficult to sell (recall Inmos).
I'm still trying to find the compelling reason that will convince the world
to jump to parallel software - and thinking along the lines of it needing to
be new software and maybe to reduce power consumption (as is a paper at
Eindhoven). This is leading me to think of embedded systems that are
relatively small (in terms of lines of code as well as for energy or size).
If you add reliability / safety-critical supported by formalism then
Automotive might be a target (as suggested by Eric Verhulst), as might
Space.
Barry.
Dr Barry M. Cook, BSc, PhD, CEng, MBCS, CITP, MIEEE
CTO,
4Links Limited,
The Mansion,
Bletchley Park,
MK3 6ZP,
UK.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chalmers, Kevin" <K.Chalmers@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Matt Jadud" <mcj4@xxxxxxxxxx>; "Andrew Delin"
<Andrew.Delin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <occam-com@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 10:52 AM
Subject: RE: Transputer Development System, 2006? (aka Sony PS/3 runs
multi-core Linux)
Perhaps a little off topic on this one. Myself and Jon Kerridge were
looking at Intel's descriptions and plans with multi-core. From what we
can gather, their plan is to remove any need to develop parallel
systems, and let the system try and work out the best approach. It
seems Intel believes that parallel development is too difficult. Sigh.
Kevin Chalmers
Research Student
School of Computing
Napier University
Edinburgh
Hi Andrew,
Damian Dimmich at is working towards this; he had a paper in CPA 2006
that explores just this issue, and has a working port of the
Transterpreter (a small, portable runtime for occam-pi) to the Cell.
http://www.transterpreter.org/papers/dimmich-jacobsen-jadud-cpa-2006.pdf
Running on top of Yellow Dog would be the easy way in; Damian is
exploring code distribution and code generation for multi-core targets
like the Cell, and (currently) has 9 separate instances of the runtime
environment on a single CPU.
See the paper for more details; also, since Damian is on this list, he
might have additional comments or be able to address more specific
questions that you or others might have.
Cheers,
Matt
Andrew Delin wrote:
> Team, I thought this was interesting.
>
> Why might we be interested in the release of Sony's PS/3 games
console?
>
> Because it contains a multi-core Cell processor - and can run Linux.
>
> Fred and others - I am wondering if it is possible to release a KROC
that targets this platform and takes advantage of the multiple
processors
inside the new Sony console. This would give a true parallel machine
to
run Occam-Pi. It could be used as a modern 'TDS' with several cores to
run
on.
>
> Nine cores is very tempting - and rather cheap. I understand the YD
Linux distribution doesn't fully use all cores, but perhaps an
Occam-Pi
build could? If we can piggy back on the interest in Linux, perhaps we
might get more interest in the process-oriented-design philosophy
we've
discussed on this group.
>
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