Multi-core is red hot. But most people in the IT industry don't realize
how much of a pain it is to write applications that can handle the
increased performance that comes with multi-core processors.
Most application developers have just been trained on your classic
single-core scenario and lack the wherewithal to program for many cores and
threads.
But with the pressure mounting to contend with the enhanced perks of multi-core
chips for high-performance computing, or multi-core GPUs for video gaming,
it's becoming more imperative for developers to get up to speed with how to
write new applications.
Enter RapidMind.
The startup recently launched
the second version of its application-development platform to help
independent software developers (ISVs) write multi-core applications without
having to relearn programming.
Internetnews.com recently caught up with RapidMind CEO Ray DePaul and
Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Michael McCool to discuss how the company plans
to make an impact among programmers with its new platform.
developerWorks : Cell Broadband Engine resource center: News::
The Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) is a new architecture which extends the 64-bit Power Architecture. For the love of multi-core pain (internet.com)
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/cell/news54.htmlHOME |
Q: What problem is RapidMind trying to solve?
DePaul: We are leading the way in solving what's become known as the
multi-core challenge. In the last couple of decades, processors got faster
simply by increasing the clock speed. So you went from one to two to three
gigahertz, and software just went along for the ride and had a free lunch.
As
of a couple years ago, the processors couldn't increase the clock speed
anymore because of power and heat dissipation. So we all realized we could
add multiple cores and claim a much higher theoretical performance.
You can look at Intel going from a dual core to a quad core recently, and
people are struggling to find out what to do with these additional cores.
The GPU vendors, ATI and Nvidia, have known about multi-core for years. In
fact, the latest GPUs have up to 128 cores, so they're way ahead of the game
on this.
Google AppEngine - A First Look::
The idea is clearly to take advantage of our massive multi-core future by I love globals, or Google Core Dump. Choosing between mashups and standard Web apps
http://www.dzone.com/links/rss/google_appengine_a_first_look.htmlHOME |
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Ray DePaul
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These are commodity processors that are shipped on video cards and
have tremendous performance over the CPU that's in the machine. The Cell (the Sony-Toshiba-IBM project for the PlayStation 3 is very similar) is a
nine-core processor. So, there's a wonderful opportunity to leverage these
processors. But frankly, the software industry has no idea how to take
advantage of them.
Windows Server Division WebLog : Oracle Spreads Fractional Holiday Cheer::
clear, Oracle again has revised its database pricing for multi-core processors. an equivalent of The Onion covering IT software because Id love to read their
http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2005/12/20/tional-Holiday-Cheer.aspxHOME |
Whether it's gaming or high-performance computing,
everybody is having difficulty getting to those performance levels the
processors theoretically have when you add all of the cores up.
Q: So while the processors are doing their job, the underlying software is
struggling to keep up?
DePaul: Right. With the clock speed not increasing, if an application does nothing, it will likely just run on a single core. That core isn't getting
any faster. Typically, an application has a higher and higher workload to deal
with, so the net effect of that is that the application is going to feel
slower.
McCool: The summary here is Moore's Law still exists. We're still going to
see performance doubling every 18 months, but it's going to be doing that
with a doubling of cores as opposed to doubling of each core. This means not
only will you increase in performance, but the number of cores is going to
grow exponentially over time. It's a very challenging problem for
programming.
DePaul: Think about the complications of Intel showing an 80-core TeraScale
prototype and everybody's going "oooh" and "ahhh." But the software industry is
going "What do I do with that? How do I take advantage of 80 cores?" That is
the gap that exists between what the hardware is capable of and what the
software industry is capable of.
We want developers to embrace these new technologies to achieve the
performance the processor vendors are promising and do it in a way that
doesn't require a lot of retraining. Developers understand their domain and
their application, but it's too much to ask developers to understand all of
the processor-specific issues and to track processor development.
There's a
whole generation of developers that haven't been taught how to develop in
more than one core.
Next page: Developer challenges in multi-core programming.
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