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

[Zoran Aleksic]

>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.
>

When concurrent (parallel) programing was a hot topics the last
time, some 30 - 20 years ago, there were even a few concurrent Lisp
dialects / implementations, for example QLisp or *Lisp (Star Lisp) ...

za