[squeak-dev] Prepare for Thousands of Cores --- oh my Chip - it's full of cores!

> On Jul 8, 2008, at 5:56 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
>
>> 2008/7/8 David P Harris <[hidden email]>:
>>> Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The main principle, which I based on Igor's "islands for CorruptVM"
>>>> suggestion (island term can be confusing to people when used with  
>>>> this new
>>>> MT stuff, must find alternate word), is this:
>>>
>>> island --> continent --> planet --> solar system --> galaxy -->  
>>> universe ?
>>> (Spanish: isla --> continente --> planeta --> Sistema Solar -->  
>>> galaxia -->
>>> universo)
>>> (French: île --> ; continent --> ; planète --> ; système solaire  
>>> --> galaxie
>>> --> ; univers)
>>> (German: Insel --> Kontinent --> Planet --> Sonnensystem -->  
>>> Galaxie -->
>>> Universum)
>>> (Greek: νησί --> ήπειρος --> πλανήτης -->  
>>> ηλιακό σύστημα --> γαλαξίας-->
>>> κόσμος,
>>> (in roman alphabet: nesi --> epeiros --> plantes --> eliako  
>>> systema -->
>>> galasias --> kosmos (take this with a large grain of salt!)
>>>
>>> pints --> quarts --> gallons -> barrels ?
>>>
>>> David
>>
>> Its not confusing to those, who ever heard about Croquet. And island
>> is very precise word in terms of parallel computing:
>> Islands are isolated from each other. To travel from one island to
>> another you need to cross the water.
>>
>
> I think that Klaus is saying (forgive me if I'm wrong) that "Island"  
> is confusing because it already has meaning in Tweak and Croquet.  
> However, I think that the meaning is the same (leaving aside  
> Croquet's notion of replicaion), so there's no need for a new term.  
> I also like the term for the same reason that you do (much better  
> than E's "vat").

>
>
> Cheers,
> Josh
>
>
>> --
>> Best regards,
>> Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
>>
>
>

> 2008/7/8 David P Harris :
>> Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>>>
>>> The main principle, which I based on Igor's "islands for CorruptVM"
>>> suggestion (island term can be confusing to people when used with this  
>>> new MT stuff, must find alternate word), is this:
>>
>> island --> continent --> planet --> solar system --> galaxy -->  
>> universe ?
>> (Spanish: isla --> continente --> planeta --> Sistema Solar --> galaxia  
>> -->
>> universo)
>> (French: île --> ; continent --> ; planète --> ; système solaire -->  
>> galaxie
>> --> ; univers)
>> (German: Insel --> Kontinent --> Planet --> Sonnensystem --> Galaxie -->
>> Universum)
>> (Greek: νησί --> ήπειρος --> πλανήτης --> ηλιακό σύστημα --> γαλαξίας-->
>> κόσμος,
>> (in roman alphabet: nesi --> epeiros --> plantes --> eliako systema -->
>> galasias --> kosmos (take this with a large grain of salt!)
>>

> On Jul 8, 2008, at 5:56 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
>
>> 2008/7/8 David P Harris <[hidden email]>:
>>> Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The main principle, which I based on Igor's "islands for CorruptVM"
>>>> suggestion (island term can be confusing to people when used with  
>>>> this new
>>>> MT stuff, must find alternate word), is this:
>>>
>>> island --> continent --> planet --> solar system --> galaxy -->  
>>> universe ?

>>>
>>> David
>>
>> Its not confusing to those, who ever heard about Croquet. And island
>> is very precise word in terms of parallel computing:
>> Islands are isolated from each other. To travel from one island to
>> another you need to cross the water.
>>
>
> I think that Klaus is saying (forgive me if I'm wrong) that "Island" is  
> confusing because it already has meaning in Tweak and Croquet.

> Cheers,
> Josh
>
>
>> --Best regards,
>> Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
>>
>
>
>

> It seems that there is a general assumption that threads will remain the
> unit of computational parallelism.  After attending Apple's WWDC and seeing
> some of the stuff in Snow Leopard, I don't believe this assumption is
> correct.
> Simply saying smalltalk threads must map to system threads is short sighted
> I think.  There are new models in the pipe that bear looking at.
> "Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a
> new technology code-named "Grand Central," making it easy for developers to
> create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs.
> Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing
> Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of
> GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications.
> OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an
> open standard."
> Apple press release.  The unit of computation is not pthreads.  There is
> recognition that threads only get you so far and it is looking like it isn't
> far enough.
> I think there's a major game change afoot and it is too early to make bets.

> On Tuesday 08 Jul 2008 3:26:14 am Igor Stasenko wrote:
>> It is good to see that they finally trying to use GPUs as generic
>> purpose processing units. But it has own limitations, like inability
>> to run different code in its 2^n working units. So it is more press
>> release than real breakthrough :)
> The discussions on this thread are on the lines of theatre artists discussing
> how to get a movie camera to record stage plays. It ignores a whole new class
> of story-telling possibilities opened up by a such a technology.
>
> A 1000-core commodity computing board is not going to be like a quad-core
> board with 1000 cores instead of 4. It will probably be a hypercube network
> of communicating cores. Nodes are not only "local" or "remote" but can also
> be 'neighbors'. Imagine how you could implement Kedama natively on such
> boards. Instead of having a single-thread VM simulating a world of particles,
> you could create a particle world super VM which would simulate a single-core
> VM as one of its "objects". Keeping a single time references across nodes is
> now easy. This could simplify support for temporal operators.
>
> Imagine!
> Subbu