[Openmcl-devel] Speed, compilers and multi-core processors

[Ron Garret]

Didn't the Lisp community already solve this problem with *Lisp on the  
Connection Machine?

On May 19, 2009, at 6:13 AM, Glen Foy wrote:

> This is a fascinating area and clearly the wave of the future.  We  
> could have processors with 512 cores ten years from now.  That power  
> has to be utilized.
>
> A Lisp that focused on parallel execution would be an amazing tool.   
> New worlds to conquer ...
>
> -Glen
>
>
>
> On May 19, 2009, at 8:05 AM, Alexander Repenning wrote:
>
>> not so fast ;-)
>>
>> The "how can we make use of multiple cores" is currently on the the  
>> hottest funding topics supported by NSF, DOE, Microsoft, .....
>>
>> Perhaps it is the Lisp way to look at architectures such as the x86  
>> and see mostly limitations when indeed there are plenty of  
>> opportunities. This is not about registers but about enabling end  
>> user programmers such as scientists to make use of parallelism. The  
>> big question is how to reconceptualize programming. One of the main  
>> problems is the need to overcome bad algorithmic assumptions  
>> especially the use of unnecessary loops. For instance, in  
>> Bioinformatics textbooks are full of loop based implementations of  
>> algorithms dealing with huge data structures such as gene  
>> sequences. In many cases one could replace sequential loops with  
>> parallel execution.
>>
>> Zoom out of the low level view of things. What could multi core  
>> Lisp do? Look at the computational challenges that users are  
>> dealing with. Try to come up with new computational paradigms that  
>> could help. Lisp could be a great platform to explore these issues.  
>> Careful: if you can contribute to this you may actually receive  
>> funding.
>>
>> alex
>>
>>
>>
>> On May 18, 2009, at 10:45 AM, Brian Mastenbrook wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 10:13 -0400, Glen Foy wrote:
>>>
>>>> My ignorance of compiler design is breathtaking, but could multi- 
>>>> core
>>>> compiler techniques be used to compensate for Intel's register- 
>>>> starved
>>>> architecture?
>>>
>>> In a word, no.
>>
>> Prof. Alexander Repenning
>>
>> University of Colorado
>> Computer Science Department
>> Boulder, CO 80309-430
>>
>> vCard: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf
>>
>>
>
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