Posted on 12/18/2007 9:53:23 PM PST by LibWhacker
REDMOND, Wash. — When he was chief executive of Intel in the 1990s, Andrew S. Grove would often talk about the “software spiral” — the interplay between ever-faster microprocessor chips and software that required ever more computing power.
The potential speed of chips is still climbing, but now the software they run is having trouble keeping up. Newer chips with multiple processors require dauntingly complex software that breaks up computing chores into chunks that can be processed at the same time.
The challenges 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.
The company is mounting a major effort to improve the parallel computing capabilities in its software.
“Microsoft is doing the right thing in trying to develop parallel software,” said Andrew Singer, a veteran software designer who is the co-founder of Rapport Inc., a parallel computing company based in Redwood City, Calif. “They could be roadkill if somebody else figures out how to do this first.”
Mr. Grove’s software spiral started to break down two years ago. Intel’s microprocessors were generating so much heat that they were melting, forcing Intel to change direction and try to add computing power by placing multiple smaller processors on a single chip.
Much like adding lanes on a freeway, the new strategy, now being widely adopted by the entire semiconductor industry, works only to the degree that more cars (or computing instructions) can be packed into each lane (or processor).
The stakes are high. The growth of the computer and consumer electronics industries is driven by a steady stream of advances in both hardware and software, creating...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Linux has handled multi-processing well for years. :)
BTTT
Bump
So has Windows.
The issue is applications that can use multiple processors (threads). Very few applications today can take full advantage of multiple cores.
The bigger question for Microsoft is if they can survive the Vista debacle. I don’t think it is clear that they can.
This is impossible because chips are made in a dust-free environment.
< /nerd>
Ah, yes … with Vista 2.9.875, to be named “xxx”.
Wow - maybe this old assembly language programer will have a second career ...
On Vista, IT is a quirky OS with the automatic updates, and a # of people prefer XP due to being used to it.
Wouldn’t multi-threaded applications be prime candidates for these manycore chips?
There’s huge compatibility problems with older software and Vista. Most businesses have rejected it.
You know it is bad with Microsoft is allowing people who purchased Vista to go back to XP:
Yes.
The System i machine from IBM re-creates the object code to take advantage of parallel and multiprocessing CPU’s The OS converts the object code on the fly during each architecture change during the load process of the version of OS desiged to take advantage of it.
IBM’s been there and ddone that. Long ago.
This article takes the viewpoint of the tail wagging the dog. I have seen this phenomenon in computing for over 30 years.
The hardware designers hit the wall for single processor performance and start building systems with more processors since it is the easiest way to add CPU power to a system. Unfortunately, most applications for personal computers are doing tasks which don’t benefit from multiple processors.
That doesn’t keep the hardware centric types from blaming the inadequacy of the software designs for taking advantage of the systems that they build.
We had a line of mainframe processors designed in Japan. In the Japanese company we worked with the hardware designers were king. They would add “bells and whistles” to the hardware presuming that the software would willingly follow their every lead. During meetings between the hardware and software designers the HW people would essentially dictate to the SW people what they would have in the next generation. Both the Japanese SW designers and the American SW designers would tell the Japanese HW designers that certain features were essentially not useful, but these features went into the implementation anyway. Our Japanese based processors had three different modes of virtual address development with sub-variations. The software never used two of them. Furthermore, there were modes in the architecture which the software never used, but the HW designers would still IMPROVE them.
We wound up with a lot of wasted silicon in the chipsets carrying around a bunch of functionality that the software could never use.
We would not have taken kindly to the hardware designers denigrating our software for not using all the features they could crank out!
Vista sucks
Vista sucks
Vista sucks
Viiiiiiiiiiiistaaaa suuuuuuucks!
i5/OS V6R1 is coming soon.
Stuff like this just amazes me. I can still remember plinking away on my Commodore 64 as a kid (and before that, my older brother’s TI-99/4A with a cassette tape “drive” :-) )
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
>> The company is mounting a major effort to improve the parallel computing capabilities in its software.
Dot NOT
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