Why so little parallelism?
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From: BDH on 21 Dec 2006 07:33 > The point is not that I want to come in for some sort of exam. The > point is that English is the assembly language of thinking. Except without the execution speed advantages.
From: Nick Maclaren on 21 Dec 2006 07:35 In article <1166704092.409756.179980(a)f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, "BDH" <bhauth(a)gmail.com> writes: |> > It needs to be written in some form, you don't need to prove its |> > correctness although that helps :) but you do need to come up with it |> > and write it down in some form that other people can understand within |> > the 20 minutes otherwise you can claim all the time you want. |> |> The point is not that I want to come in for some sort of exam. The |> point is that English is the assembly language of thinking. Indeed. But, as you have failed to provide any evidence that you can deliver what you claim even in English, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the problem is in your thinking. |> Well, in all the things I've done P-completeness never came up. Do you |> find that surprising? It's interesting, but in terms of actual |> application... You are evading the point. P-completeness (like NP-completeness) is of negligible practical importance. But the fact that there are important algorithms that have the relevant properties is of great practical importance. In particular, your claim that you could parallelise any algorithm in principle in 20 minutes showed an ignorance of the fact that there are important algorithms that are believed not to be parallelisable. Regards, Nick Maclaren.
From: Eugene Miya on 21 Dec 2006 18:25 In article <m3d56l7zts.fsf(a)garlic.com>, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn(a)garlic.com> wrote: >eugene(a)cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes: >> Sure. Your major funding organization makes business machines, not >> research machines. >> >> It merely happens that it has 3 things it chose to name Research Centers >> and a number of lesser "Science" centers and similarly acronymed >> facilities. > >the major funding organization for RP3 was not the business machine >unit ... this particular organization had been responsible for a lot >of machines used in various gov. operations. While I know IBM Federal Systems Division (FSD) in Gaithersburg has numerous other offices, and you and Greg and Del aren't the only IBMers or ex-IBMers, FSD isn't a stand alone entity. It was then a Divison of your firm International BUSINESS Machines. You guys produce BUSINESS machines right? You are in the BUSINESS os producing BUSINESS machines? I don't mean to sound accusatory. >> I sat in on Greg Pfister's presentation at SJ RC (with numerous people >> outside IBM like DEC). >> interconnection architectures like the NYU Ultracomputer. Then one of ^^^^^^^^^ >> your employees asked the question about whether the RP3 would be ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >> instruction set compatible with the 370-line (he clearly had not been >> listening to the earlier CPU portion of the talk but also aligned with >> the pre-PC mainframe mind set). But that's history. >> >> NDAs >> it was your choice. You guys don't have research in your names. > >my wife's analysis of RP3 had nothing to do with 370 instruction set >compatibility ... it had more to do with whether it could really >achieved the scaleup being claimed .... especially in the (mostly >federal) gov. market segment. I didn't say that. One of IBM's employees asked the question. I knew a little something about the 801, RS6K, etc. >i haven't tried to do either ... i've just presented actual email >exchanges from the period. It's water under the bridge. --
From: Eugene Miya on 21 Dec 2006 18:35 >> Whose books? In article <FNThh.5458$1W1.537(a)newsfe4-win.ntli.net>, ChrisQuayle <nospam(a)devnul.co.uk> wrote: >I have Foley & Van Dam, Hearn & Baker, Burger & Gillies and others, but >the problem with all these books is that they assume a machine with lots >of resources. Being a complete newbie to graphics programming and having >bought the books on graphics, I was soon out buying s/h books on math >for revision - stuff I hadn't looked at for years. If you are working >with low throughput processors, this leads on to books on approximations >and techniques thereof. Books from the 60's/70's/80's, when graphics was >really hard work in performance terms. This leads one to stuff like >cordic etc, but none of this is as fast as scaled integer arithmetic ^ 2 >and lookup tables for the transcendental functions. The latter is true. You can also read my "instructor"/co-worker Blinn's graphics corner books. Or Andrew's series. >Oh yes, and ABE books is your friend :-)... Ah! >> Are these pixels aliased or anti-aliased? That was merely an example. >For a lot of embedded work, you don't have the cpu throughput to support >anti aliasing, so it's one bit per pixel. You get round the problem of >aliasing by designing the screen layout to avoid visible aliasing, or >choose shapes that don't cause the problem in the first place. That was merely an example. Pure computer people care less. >> I have friends who are looking to hire graphics talent, but they are >> finding that the talent pool is drying up because the perception is that >> graphics is a "solved" problem. They are not even finding it in India >> and China. The normal computing channels have guys who think they don't >> know graphics and art, and they more than enough graphics arts people, >> but fewer and fewer in the technical coding aspects. > >Well, perhaps the problem of graphics is solved in terms of low cost >hardware accelerated boards and libraries to drive them, available at >low cost to all, but one would hope that this doesn't mean the end of >basic research... Some one has to design the board and pipelines. The real problem is modularity. It doesn't help when graphics artists get really confused with message passing, shared memory, etc. --
From: Eugene Miya on 21 Dec 2006 18:37
In article <1166624619.341859.267160(a)a3g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>, BDH <bhauth(a)gmail.com> wrote: >Personally I see 3d wavelet graphics as a promising alternative to >meshes. What kinds of meshes? I'm not so certain. I need to post 6 more references to Nick's part of the thread. Sure, I also go with the MPI, but I have far more radical architectural references which still have not come to past. It's X-mas. I'm out here to ski for 4 days. -- |