For the past four decades explosive gains in computing power have contributed to unprecedented progress in innovation, productivity and human welfare. But that progress is now threatened by the unthinkable: an end to the gains in computing power.
We have reached the limit of what is possible with one or more traditional, serial central processing units, [...]

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Freescale Semiconductor has introduced a family of programmable digital signal processors (DSPs) that promises to deliver the optimal blend of low cost and high performance for a broad range of applications in the medical, aerospace/defense and test/measurement markets. The MSC825x family of scalable DSPs is based on the Freescale’s SC3850 StarCore DSP core.
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Arm Holdings chief executive officer Warren East told EE Times Wednesday that servers based on ARM multicore processors should arrive within the next twelve months. The news confirms previous speculation stemming from Google’s acquisition of Agnilux and a recent job advertisement posted by Microsoft. East said that the current architecture, designed for client-side computing, can [...]

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TraceX/MC from Express Logic, Inc., (ESC booth 1128) is a multicore-enabled and expanded version of the TraceX graphical real-time event analysis tool for use with the ThreadX RTOS. TraceX/MC enables embedded developers to visualize and better understand the behavior of their real-time systems by showing thread and core activity graphically across a common timescale.
With TraceX/MC, [...]

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By Stephen Blair-Chappell
Multicore processors are everywhere. In desktop computing, it is almost impossible to buy a computer that does not have a multicore CPU inside. Multicore technology is also impacting the embedded space, where increased performance per watt presents a compelling case for migration.
Multicore technology is also impacting the embedded space, where increased performance per [...]

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By Victor J. Duvanenko
To date, the focus for this series has been on measurement-based performance optimization of various sorting algorithms, such as Counting Sort, several Radix Sorts, Insertion and Selections Sorts, on a single processor. These implementations, while high-performance through careful use of the hybrid algorithm and data type adaptable approach, use only a portion [...]

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Mentor Graphics Corp. announced the Mentor Embedded Nucleus SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) technology and support for the Multicore Communications Application Programming Interface (MCAPI) standard for inter-processor communication (IPC), established by the Multicore Association.
According to a release, these Mentor Graphics technologies provide a solution for developers of multicore and multi-OS designs for both symmetric and asymmetric multiprocessing [...]

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A new alliance has been formed in the multi-core parallel processing and software development arena. The group, dubbed the eNsemble Multi-Core Alliance, serves as the foundation upon which OEMs ”can develop high-performance networking equipment using industry-leading multi-core processors.”
One of the founding members of the group is NetLogic Microsystems Inc. Other members include 6WIND, Abatron, Advantech, [...]

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CriticalBlue, a pioneer in embedded multicore software analysis, exploration and verification tools, and Freescale Semiconductor, a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors, have collaborated to make CriticalBlue’s Prism development environment available to support Freescale’s QorIQ multicore processor families. Software developers will be able to migrate, optimize and verify their existing software [...]

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An Interview with Joseph Hellerstein
by Nicole Hemsoth
MIT’s Technology Review provided some in-depth coverage on the top ten emerging technologies for the coming year. On a list that includes solar fuel, green concrete, and light-trapping photovoltaics the publication tacked on the concept of “cloud programming” — a revolutionary movement that is a attributed in large part [...]

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By Stephen Toub
Partitioning is the act of splitting a data set to be processed in parallel by multiple logical processors. It is a fundamental aspect of parallel computing, as without partitioning everything would execute serially. There are, of course, a multitude of ways in which a data set may be partitioned, and which approach is [...]

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MIT researchers have developed software that makes computer simulations of physical systems run much more efficiently on so-called multicore chips. In experiments involving chips with 24 separate cores — or processors — simulations of fluid flows were at least 50 percent more efficient with the new software than they were with conventional software. And that [...]

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by Aharon Etengoff
Chip expert and analyst David Kanter has warned that cloud computing poses “definite” security risks for both corporations and individual end users.
“From a direct security stand point, one problem for cloud computing is the inherent risks of sharing the same physical hardware and software (i.e. multi-tenancy). While the software stack in a [...]

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Plurality Ltd. announced today at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, California, the world’s first scalable 256 multicore processor for wireless infrastructure, the HyperCore™ family of low power, small footprint, ManyCore processor IP for wireless markets. HyperCore represents a new category of acceleration co-processor based on a revolutionary architecture that simplifies code compilation and [...]

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Advanced Micro Devices will roll out at the Embedded Systems Conference embedded versions of PC chip sets, graphics and as many as seven x86 processors, including AMD’s first embedded chips to support DDR3 memory and the HyperTransport 3 interconnect.
The new embedded CPUs range from an 8W single-core Athlon II CPU running at 1 GHz to [...]

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An international research team from Japan and Michigan Technological University have demonstrated a molecular circuit that can evolve continuously to solve complex problems that challenge today’s supercomputers.
The massively parallel circuit contains a layer of molecular switches (monolayer) that simultaneously interact in a manner similar to the information processing performed by the neurons in the human [...]

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by Andrew Glover
Concurrent programming is central to Java™ development 2.0, but probably not thread-based concurrency. Andrew Glover explains why actors trump threads for concurrent programming in multicore systems. He then introduces Kilim, an actor-based message-passing framework that weaves together concurrent and distributed programming.
Debugging nondeterministic defects in multithreaded applications has to be one of the most [...]

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Billy Newport talks to InfoQ about the need for higher level abstraction to do parallel programming with multi-core systems effectively. The interview explores some approaches taken with MapReduce products such as Cascading and Pig for a Hadoop cluster, explores the limitations of the actor model and message passing, and touches on IBM’s WebSphere eXtreme Scale [...]

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by Carlos Bueno
Two people can paint a house faster than one can. Honeybees work independently but pass messages to each other about conditions in the field. Many forms of concurrency, so obvious and natural in the real world, are actually pretty alien to the way we write programs today. It’s much easier to write a [...]

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By Arch Robison
This blog is first of three about applying parallel patterns to a real program. I’ll point out some excellent parallel pattern documents on the Web and an unusual video game of mine. This blog discusses background material and overall parallelization strategy. Part 2 covers threading. Part 3 covers vectorization [...]

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