CPU-Z, the legendary freeware that gathers information on microprocessors, mainboard, memory and graphics improved its support to most modern mobile multicore microprocessors in its new version 1.53. If you want to understand modern multicore hardware, it is a good idea to run this utility on 64-bits or 32-bits Windows.
In the basic sequential model of programming, a computer program's instructions are executed one at a time. The program is viewed as a recipe and each step is to be performed by the computer in the order and amount specified. The designer of the program breaks up the software into a collection of tasks. Each task is performed in a specified order, and each task stands in line and must wait its turn.
A decade ago, the hardware requirements for running a specific software or system were easier to specify. There were less microprocessor models and less multitasking. The massive adoption of multicore microprocessors and the micro-architecture changes that they brought call for a new model of hardware requirements specification.
Things do get a bit dicey when one is in uncharted waters and decisions have to be made. This parallelism, multicore, and many core stuff has lots of different entry and exit points. We can have parallelism and concurrency at the hardware layers, operating system layers, network layers, database layers, application layers, design layers, and requirement layers.
Microsoft took into account the feedback around performance issues and bugs provided by Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 users and decided to extend the Beta period. The new Visual Studio version introduces a lot of changes, including many features focused on multicore programming. A new checkpoint release, a Release Candidate would be publicly available during February 2010.
Visual Basic 10, part of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, also supports the new task-based programming model. Therefore, you can take advantage of multicore hardware using this programming language. In fact, it offers access to all the new features introduced in .NET Framework 4 Beta 2.
We admit to throwing around some pretty charged terms in a loose fashion. Sometimes we forget that not everybody is drinking the koolaid. We [assume] that words like paradigm, architecture, and model mean the same thing to everyone. Of course we are wrong (what they say about 'assume' is still in effect).
We've been trying to figure out exactly what the attraction is. What is it that causes someone to be drawn to a book that explicitly states that it's for dummies? Is it the yellow and black motif? Maybe because 'dummy' rhymes with 'yummy'? What exactly causes someone to reach for a book entitled 'X for Dummies'?
You already know that achieving a linear speedup as the number of cores increases in real life parallelized applications is indeed very difficult. However, sometimes, the multicore scalability of certain algorithms for existing multicore systems could be worse than expected. The overhead and the bugs introduced by concurrency could bring really unexpected scalability problems when the number of cores increases. Intel can help you with a free service in the cloud.
I know, I know, a lot of folks out there are big subscribers to the 'just-get-'er -done' school of software maintenance and development. The idea of sitting somewhere while a design group is doing its work is just plain torture. It feels like a waste of time and money. Somehow there's always a fire that demands that we code now and capture the design later.
TeraGrid Compute Time Available
| My main development machine has: |
| 1 core |
 14%
|
| 2 cores |
 37%
|
| 4 cores |
 23%
|
| 8 cores |
 12%
|
| A whole bunch more cores |
 13%
|
Parallel Pattern 6: Partition
A straightforward way to express both data locality and isolation
December 15, 2009
How to Use Intel® Parallel Studio to Streamline Code Development in a Multicore Environment
Speaker: Matt Dunbar, Director for Performance Technology, SIMULIA (Bio)
Matt Dunbar is the director for performance technology at SIMULIA. Since joining the company in 1993, he has worked on parallelization of the Abaqus suite of products, initially for shared memory architectures and more recently for distributed memory architectures. Dunbar has also been intimately involved in selecting both the hardware and software tools used in the development of the Abaqus product line.
Abstract:
Resolve elusive, costly multithreading errors quickly and efficiently with Intel® Parallel Studio. While many coding problems that lead to bugs in software applications are typically straightforward logic errors, errors in managing memory and in multithreading code can sometimes take weeks to months to diagnose and fix. Matt Dunbar explores how and why taking advantage of multicore processors through multithreaded code is critical for compute-intensive applications. While spotlighting his work on SIMULIA's Abaqus finite element solver, Dunbar addresses the need for multicore execution and shares his experiences using Intel Parallel Studio to streamline code development in a multicore environment.
