How We'll Program 1000 Cores - and Get Linus Ranting, Again

vikingpower writes For developers, 2015 got kick-started mentally by a Linus Torvald rant about parallel computing being a bunch of crock. Although Linus' rants are deservedly famous for the political incorrectness and (often) for their insight, it may be that Linus has overlooked Gustafson's Law. Back in 2012, the High Scalability blog already ran a post pointing towards new ways to think about parallel computing, especially the ideas of David Ungar, who thinks in the direction of lock-less computing of intermediary, possibly faulty results that are updated often. At the end of this year, we may be thinking differently about parallel server-side computing than we do today.

Comments

Re:Pullin' a Gates?

[drinkypoo]

So he never makes that exact quote, however one can understand why people picked it up. Essentially, BG thought in 1981 640K would be enough for everybody for a long while.

"Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft Corp. a fiercely competitive company(...)" - Microsoft Encarta, 1996
"Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft is a contributor to several charitable causes, including...(...)" Microsoft Encarta 2000

In some other discussion about whether BG ever said 640k should be enough for anyone, evidence was presented including an eye- (and ear-)witness account of when he did say it. But hey, let's not lose any sleep over whether Bill Gates is a liar, because we know he is. The DoJ had him over a barrel. Then the Gates Foundation was created to promote the goals of Big Pharma and Strong IP law, if you look at where they spend their money and the terms under which these foreign nations get aid from the foundation, it's clear what their actual goals are.

If you have a hard time believing that Gates ever said 640k should be enough for anyone, keep in mind that 1) he has claimed that he personally created the 640k limit, 2) that he could easily have said it meaning that 640k should have been enough for anyone at that moment, justifying the 640k barrier*, and 3) Bill Gates is a liar, and has been proven such in court.

* The chip could only address 1MB, video memory had to go somewhere, there had to be a split somewhere, the design may well have been completely justified.