Researchers gave an update on their work to find new programming models for tomorrow’s many-core processors at an annual event at the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, Berkeley announced two new research centers—one focused on low-power circuits and another on cloud computing.

Separately, researchers here called for a new class of power engineers to deal with emerging energy challenges. The field needs cross-trained experts to bring the lessons of the Internet to tomorrow’s smart electric grid, they said in a panel discussion at the event.

Kurt Keutzer, a professor working at Berkeley’s Parallel Computing Lab, described more than half a dozen applications researchers have written using a new parallel methodology called Pallas. In addition, work has begun on a more general framework for parallelism called Copperhead that could be used by a wider group of programmers, he said.

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