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AMD Quad Cores, Oh My
Lullabye_Muse writes "From engadget we learn that AMD has plans for putting 4 cores on one die by the time Apple has fully gone to Intel processors. Full story here. They say they could eventually have up to 32 cores with scalable technology, but most programs haven't even got the ability to hyperthread, so do we really need the extra cores?"
but most programs haven't even got the ability to hyperthread, so do we really need the extra cores?
Once upon a time, most programs didn't have the ability to do IEEE754 floating point either so did we really need the FPUs?
Once upon a time, most programs didn't have the ability to do 3D graphics at 30fps. Do we really need dedicated high performance graphics cards?
The list goes on... but no one learns...
" What does a developer have to do to take advantage of this?"
Easy use threads.
Multi-threaded code is very difficult to write correctly and debug. It's hardly 'easy'.
Multi threading is not all that hard. And yes I have written code that uses threads.
When, for a school project? There are very few cases where integrating a multi-threaded handler into a progrom doesn't introduce a formidable degree of complexity. What really needs to take root is a new programming paradigm. One that assumes all procedures, functions and system calls are designated as concurrent from the get-go. People smarter than most of us need to design a language/compiler that doesn't burden the programmer with the responsibility of 'keeping track' of when to use threads and when not to.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Second, most spyware is well written. Badly written spyware is ineffective -- by screwing up your system, it calls attention to itself, and encourages you to run a scan. Spyware and adware wouldn't have spread so thoroughly if it were all written by hacks.