<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>A Lisp that focused on parallel execution would be an amazing tool. New worlds to conquer ...</div><div><br></div><div>-Glen</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On May 19, 2009, at 8:05 AM, Alexander Repenning wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>not so fast ;-)</div><div><br></div><div>The "how can we make use of multiple cores" is currently on the the hottest funding topics supported by NSF, DOE, Microsoft, .....</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>alex</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On May 18, 2009, at 10:45 AM, Brian Mastenbrook wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); ">On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 10:13 -0400, Glen Foy wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">My ignorance of compiler design is breathtaking, but could multi-core<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">compiler techniques be used to compensate for Intel's register-starved<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">architecture?<br></blockquote><br>In a word, no.</span></blockquote></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Prof. Alexander Repenning</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">University of Colorado</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Computer Science Department</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Boulder, CO 80309-430</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">vCard: <a href="http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf">http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf</a></font></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></span></span></div></span> </div><br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>