Parallel programmers must deal with a host of issues peculiar to parallel programs such as synchronization, protecting shared variables, and finding thread safe versions of common math routines (such as random number generation). One of the most subtle problems faced by the parallel programmer, however, arises from the properties of floating point numbers. Floating [...]

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Rob Farber writes about CUDA programming for Dr. Dobb’s. In Part 4 of this article series on CUDA, he discussed how the execution model and kernel launch execution configuration affects the number of registers and amount of local multiprocessor resources such as shared memory. In this installment, he writes about memory performance and the [...]

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Milind writes on Intel Software Network about the core performance related issues that one should be aware of in .NET. Web sites often slow or even go down when traffic increases. Performance/stress testing of your application can help avoid such downtime. With Microsoft® .NET Framework, developers can now build complete business solutions quickly with more [...]

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NVIDIA Corporation and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) today announced that UIUC has been named as the world’s first CUDA Center of Excellence. In addition to the appointment, NVIDIA has donated $500,000 to UIUC for the development of parallel computing facilities and the continuation of its research programs.
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The 45th Design Automation Conference (DAC), the electronic design automation (EDA) industry’s prestigious annual forum, awarded Best Paper honors to two technical papers presented at this year’s conference. One of them went to Wei Dong, Peng Li and Xiaoji Ye, of Texas A&M University, the authors of “WavePipe: Parallel Transient Simulation of Analog and Digital [...]

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Technical Editor (EDN.com) Robert Cravotta explores processor and software-processing architectures and the impact they have on system and software development. Relevant architectures include microprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors (DSPs), multiprocessor architectures, processor fabrics, coprocessors, and accelerators, plus embedded cores in FPGAs, SOCs, and ASICs.
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The most efficient engineers seek out and use solutions that already exist. Here is an article by Jack Ganssle of Embedded.com providing some good resources for embedded systems engineers searching for answers.
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SKY Computers Inc. today announced TimeTrac™, performance optimizing software for Linux multi-processing systems. TimeTrac, developed and used internally at SKY, is a dynamic software tool that assists software developers fine tune and debug real time multiprocessor and multi-core processor applications.
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6WIND today announced a new solution targeted at mid-range applications (2 to 4 cores) to provide the highest L2/L3 cache performance for a pure Linux system. Based on Fast Path architecture, the 6WINDGate™ EDS software enables Fast Path implementation as a Linux kernel module between the Linux networking stack and the interface drivers.
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Flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) are considered to be the future of performance hard drives, and everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon. Manufacturers tout the power savings of flash-based SSDs compared to conventional hard drives. True? Tom’s Hardware found that he power savings aren’t there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you [...]

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Serial computing is dead, and the parallel computing revolution has begun: Are you part of the solution, or part of the problem? That was the question posed by Dave Patterson, head of the Parallel Computing Laboratory at UC Berkeley, during his keynote address at the Usenix conference in Boston on June 26.
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GRIDtoday Editor Derrick Harris recaps last week’s Structure 08 conference, among the first to focus on cloud computing, and gives his opinions on what he heard and learned. Although the event reaffirmed that we are nowhere near a consensus on the definition of cloud computing, Harris posits that it might not matter as long user [...]

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The crystal ball is cloudy when it comes to the nature of future chips. Scientists are racing against the clock to develop a means of defeating an enemy that threatens to stop computer technology progress dead in its tracks. The threat is not terrorism; it is Moore’s Law, as complementary metal oxide semiconductors are nearing [...]

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While Intel and AMD were locked in a fierce struggle to offer increasingly powerful processors, GPU makers were continuing to benefit more than ever from the advantages of Moore’s Law. Nvidia introduced CUDA with the release of the GeForce 8800. Here is an excellent article from Tom’s Hardware discussing the growth of CUDA, its theory, [...]

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Computer makers are throwing multiple cores at everything from servers to your printer. But the focus on horsepower misses a crucial problem associated with adding more processors. To really take advantage of them, you have to rewrite your code. Stacey Higginbotham says that, with all the work it takes to rewrite code, it’s no wonder [...]

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Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. will go head-to-head with their latest graphics architectures at the 20th annual Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, August 24-26. The event will also showcase a handful of new media processors.
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In his position statement for the International Computer Music Conference 2008 (Yes, Music Conference…), Peter Van Roy raises a number of issues related to the emergence of multi-core processors and loosely coupled systems (e.g. Internet) that are the two driving forces of the rising trend of multiple processor computing. Though challenges brought by each form [...]

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What is a high-performance data structure? To answer that question, we’re used to applying normal considerations like Big-Oh complexity, and memory overhead, locality, and traversal order. All of those apply to both sequential and concurrent software. But in concurrent code, Herb Sutter believes that we need to consider two additional things to help us pick [...]

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A version of Intel’s Atom processor is already designed into the generation of the Apple iPhone set to follow on from the imminent 3G iPhone, according to Eric Savitz, the west coast editor for Barron’s Magazine, who cited JoAnne Feeney, an analyst with FTN Midwest Securities Corp. (Cleeveland Ohio), as his source.
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Last week, Tom’s Hardware published an article titled Nvidia Smokes 3DMark Thanks to PhysX. However, using GPU for physics calculation in a CPU benchmark highly suspicious thing in any way you look at it. And in fact, it all appeared that Nvidia has been caught with its hands in a cookie jar. Finger-pointing was the [...]

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