Welcome to the Jungle (article about the future of parallel computing)

[Paulo Pinto]

Am 07.01.2012 08:08, schrieb Nick Sabalausky:
> "Paulo Pinto"<pjmlp at progtools.org>  wrote in message
> news:je7vvh$253f$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Hi,
>>
>> I just saw a follow up article from Herb Sutter about
>> the future of parallel computing.
>>
>> http://herbsutter.com/welcome-to-the-jungle/
>>
>> Very interesting read. Excuse me if someone has already
>> posted it.
>>
>
> It is interesting...But I have to say: The *one* thing that really bugs me
> about it is that it seems to be written under the assumption that the
> highest-end hardware that's *sitting around on store shelves* is the only
> hardware that's relevant, or even exists. It makes the whole thing feel
> uncomfortably ivory-tower when reading through it. Even a simple
> *acknowledgment* of the distinction would have made a huge difference. But
> the way it's written, it makes him sound like (and for all I know, he may
> very well not be like this at all), but it makes him sound like "CliffyB",
> or Tim Sweeny, or some other such graphics-whore, "in bed with MS, NVidia
> and ATI" jackass over at Epic (Epic used to actually be respectable back in
> the "MegaGames" days...).
>
>
>

But he is in a way right.

Even the small embedded systems are slowly becoming multicore. The most 
recent ARM processors are now multicore.

As an example of a multicore PIC, see the Parallax Propeller processor,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_Propeller.


Sure there will still be lots of scenarios where this won't be the case,
like there are still 8 bit PIC processors being deployed in Assembly, 
but they are niche products. The vast majority of the developers will 
have the reality he describes.

--
Paulo