<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>When I came to the University of Colorado that was my first job to program the connection machine (up to 65536 CPUs) in Lisp. Needless to say, the 12 dimensional hypercube architecture did not work out. Back then parallelism was super expensive. Now, probably the machine that you are reading this email on has at least two cores. Here is a slide comparing performance and price. Notice the price/GFlop ratio change:</div><div><br></div><div><img height="480" width="620" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:5CF78F22-3EE1-49E4-96DC-6A34D14CEEC6@google.com"></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Having scientists with Fortran background write code in StarLisp for the CM2 was not a good idea at the time. The SIMD architecture was too limiting. But some of that work is ready to go on multi cores. For instance, if are interested in optimization and pathfinding you may find this interesting: <a href="http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/PDF/OOPSLA06antiobjects.pdf">http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/PDF/OOPSLA06antiobjects.pdf</a> </div><div><br></div><div>Alex</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On May 19, 2009, at 12:44 PM, Ron Garret 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; ">Didn't the Lisp community already solve this problem with *Lisp on the Connection Machine?<div><br><div><div>On May 19, 2009, at 6:13 AM, Glen Foy 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>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></div>_______________________________________________<br>Openmcl-devel mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Openmcl-devel@clozure.com">Openmcl-devel@clozure.com</a><br><a href="http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel">http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>Openmcl-devel mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Openmcl-devel@clozure.com">Openmcl-devel@clozure.com</a><br><a href="http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel">http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel</a><br></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; "><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Prof. Alexander Repenning</font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px">University of Colorado</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px">Computer Science Department</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px">Boulder, CO 80309-430</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><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></p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></span></span></div></span> </div><br></body></html>