An inveterate open-sourcer, I'm making an uneasy peace with Microsoft Windows for the purpose of exploring the tools Intel has made available for parallelization of applications running on multicore platforms. I have used and verbally abused Windows in every release since Windows 2.1. Thus I am no stranger, but Windows has not been a C/C++ development environment for me since the 1990's, though I test and run my Java stuff on Windows.

So, d'oh, of course I'm looking for the simplest way to do this ... [article updated at end]

So you aren't ready to buy into this multicore and parallelization stuff until you're able to see its benefits with your own eyes? If that's the case, then take a couple of minutes to watch this pair of YouTube videos that Gaston Hillar has prepared as part of his book C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide.

It doesn't matter which coffee shop -- Henry's, Z's, or the Bourgeois Pig -- I end up at, it's always the same ever since free WiFi came on the scene. There are more laptops than coffee mugs, and never enough places to sit. But I'm as bad as the rest. What with free wireless Internet access and a cell phone, well, I haven't been in the office for year or so now, and even the concept of a home-office is becoming more remote.

Wouldn't you know it. Just as we're starting to wrap our minds around the idea of parallel programming and multicore processors, Intel ups the ante with Larrabee, a many-core architecture that has the potential to change the game. This doesn't mean that the concepts of multithreading and parallel programming can be ignored. Quite the contrary. If anything, thinking parallel and having a firm grasp on multithreading will be more critical than ever -- especially if you intend on tackling Larrabee.

Maybe it's just me, but I have to confess I'm no good at doing more than one thing at once. For example, I'm at the breakfast table reading the paper and eating, suddenly my wife comments "did you hear that? ...". Usually I haven't. My typical reply is "no - I was reading the paper".

Snipe hunts, fool's gold, solutions to AI-complete problems, I've been victimized by them all. Although I have gotten over the snipe hunts and fool's gold, I haven't been able to quite shake the AI-complete part yet. Why can't I just throw more processors at the problem? Why can't the fastest beat the hardest? Oops, let me regress for a moment. I said I would have to stir up what I meant by AI-complete, so first let me do so.

Just because the term "cloud computing" has been ridden hard and put away wet doesn't mean there isn't any "there" there. Hype aside, cloud computing appears to be for real. The promise that cloud computing offers developers with great ideas but little cash execute those ideas is reason enough to hop on the bandwagon.

It's been "double the pleasure double the fun" on the back end for some time now. 4-way, 8-way, 16-way server processor configurations are pretty run-of-the-mill these days. All that server stuff has been multithreaded, multiprogrammed and multiprocessed, and at this point it's pretty much a done deal right? By server stuff I mean the database app, the web server, the e-mail server, the E-bay server, the World-of-Warcraft server, etc. Sure the programming is a little dicey. The debugging and testing is a little unpredictable and treacherous at times but we manage to pull it off. The server stuff runs just fast enough so that the user doesn't give up hope and continues to keep coming back. Mission accomplished right?

Every now and then one of those don't-miss workshops pops up. Alas, I usually don't make it to them because the boss and I have a different definition of what "don't miss" means. But we see eye-to-eye on the upcoming Workshop on Directions in Multicore Programming Education to be held on March 8, 2009, in Washington DC. When I told him about it, the boss said "Sounds great. What time does your bus leave?" Hmmm, California to DC on a Greyhound bus for an 8-hour workshop? Darn, sounds like another great event I'll miss. But that doesn't mean you have to miss it, particularly if you're in the neighborhood.

There's not much good that we can say when it comes to the economy. Still, there are those among us who see the bottle half full, rather than half empty.

Now I know why Dr. Dobb's columnist and concurrency expert Herb Sutter hasn't turned in his column -- he's been preparing for his upcoming Effective Concurrency seminar on March 16-18, 2009 in Stockholm, Sweden.