Is Parallelism the New New Thing?

astwon sends us to a blog post by parallel computing pioneer Bill McColl speculating that, with the cooling of Web 2.0, parallelism may be a hot new area for entrepreneurs and investors. (Take with requisite salt grains as he is the founder of a Silicon Valley company in this area.) McColl suggests a few other upcoming "new things," such as Saas as an appliance and massive memory systems. Worth a read.

Comments

1% of programmers

[LotsOfPhil]

Only around 1% of the world's software developers have any experience of parallel programming.

This seems far, far too low. Admittedly I work in a place that does "parallel programming," but it still seems awfully low.

Re:1% of programmers

[Otter]

Admittedly I work in a place that does "parallel programming," but it still seems awfully low.

I think your experience is wildly skewed toward the high end of programming skill. The percentage of working programmers who can't iterate over an array is probably in the 15-20% range, even without getting into whether "web programmers" are included in that statistic. I'd be astonished if the number with parallel experience is significantly above 1%.

Re:1% of programmers

[Anne Thwacks]

I'd believe 1% as having "some experience". Some experience is what you put on your CV when you know what the buzword means.

If you ask how many can "regularly achieve significant performance through use of multiple threads" then 0.1% is far too high. If you mean "can exchange data between a userland thread and an ISR in compliance with the needs of reliable parallel execution" then its a safe bet that less than 0.1% are mentally up to the challenge. /. readers are not typical of the programming cummiity. These days people who can drag-and-drop call themselves programmers. Poeple who can spell "l337" are one!

evolution, not revolution

[nguy]

the guy has a "startup in stealth mode" called parallel computing. Of course he wants to generate buzz.

Decade after decade, people keep trying to sell silver bullets for parallel computing: the perfect language, the perfect network, the perfect os, etc. Nothing ever wins big. Instead, there is a diversity of solutions for a diversity of problems, and progress is slow but steady.

"Next hot thing" my hiney

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

For having been in the computer industry for too long, I reckon the "next hot thing" usually means the "latest fad" that many of the entrepreneurs involved in hope will turn into the "next get-rich-quick scheme".

Because really, anybody believes Web-Two-Oh was anything but the regular web's natural evolution with a fancy name tacked on?

"...with the cooling of Web 2.0,..."

[sm62704]

Sorry guys, web 2.0 was never cool and never will be.