June 26, 2009
This Week's Multicore Reading List
Deirdre Blake
The Clojure language and solid mathematics top this week's list
A list of book releases compiled by Dr. Dobb's to keep you up-to-date on parallel programming and multicore technology.
Programming Clojure:
by Stuart Halloway
If you're a Java programmer, if you care about concurrency, or if you enjoy working in low-ceremony language such as Ruby or Python, Clojure may be just the language for you. In this book, author Stuart Halloway shows how to write applications in a modern, concurrency-safe functional style, with the reach of the Java Virtual Machine, the simplicity of a scripting language, and the power and elegance of Lisp. Clojure is a general-purpose language with direct support for Java, a modern Lisp dialect, and support in both the language and data structures for functional programming. Implemented as a dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine, Clojure comes with a compelling combination of features:
- Clojure is elegant. Clojure's clean, careful design lets you write programs that get right to the essence of a problem, without a lot of clutter and ceremony.
- Clojure is Lisp reloaded. Clojure has the power inherent in Lisp, but is not constrained by the history of Lisp.
- Clojure is a functional language. Data structures are immutable, and functions tend to be side-effect free. This makes it easier to write correct programs, and to compose large programs from smaller ones.
- Clojure is concurrent. Rather than error-prone locking, Clojure provides software transactional memory.
- Clojure embraces Java. Calling from Clojure to Java is direct, and goes through no translation layer.
- Clojure is fast. Wherever you need it, you can get the exact same performance that you could get from hand-written Java code.
Halloway says, "Clojure feels like a general-purpose language beamed back from the near future. Its support for functional programming and software transactional memory is well beyond current practice and is well suited for multicore hardware. It brings together Lisp and the Java Virtual Machine: Lisp brings wisdom spanning most of the history of programming, and Java brings the robustness, extensive libraries, and tooling of the dominant platform available today."
http://post.oreilly.com/rd/9z1zjlf1fde893jgh64shrusddf35oauukpn6ooo4h8
Elements of Programming
By Alexander Stepanov and Paul McJones
This book provides a different understanding of programming than is presented elsewhere. Its major premise is that practical programming, like other areas of science and engineering, must be based on a solid mathematical foundation. The book shows that algorithms implemented in a real programming language, such as C++, can operate in the most general mathematical setting. For example, the fast exponentiation algorithm is defined to work with any associative operation. Using abstract algorithms leads to efficient, reliable, secure, and economical software.This is not an easy book. Nor is it a compilation of tips and tricks for incremental improvements in your programming skills. The book's value is more fundamental and, ultimately, more critical for insight into programming. To benefit fully, you will need to work through it from beginning to end, reading the code, proving the lemmas, and doing the exercises. When finished, you will see how the application of the deductive method to your programs assures that your system's software components will work together and behave as they must.The book presents a number of algorithms and requirements for types on which they are defined. The code for these descriptions—also available on the Web—is written in a small subset of C++ meant to be accessible to any experienced programmer. This subset is defined in a special language appendix coauthored by Sean Parent and Bjarne Stroustrup.
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=032163537X
Parallel Algorithms for Regular Architectures
By Russ Miller and Quentin F. Stout
This book was the first book to concentrate exclusively on algorithms and paradigms for programming parallel computers such as the hypercube, mesh, pyramid, and mesh-of-trees. Algorithms are given to solve fundamental tasks such as sorting and matrix operations, as well as problems in the field of image processing, graph theory, and computational geometry. The first chapter defines the computer models, problems to be solved, and notation that will be used throughout the book. It also describes fundamental abstract data movement operations that serve as the foundation to many of the algorithms presented in the book. The remaining chapters describe efficient implementations of these operations for specific models of computation and present algorithms (with asymptotic analyses) that are often based on these operations. The algorithms presented were the most efficient known when the book was originally released in 1996.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=8052
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