ACM Queue - Computer Architecture

Heterogeneous Computing: Here to Stay

Mohamed Zahran — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:02:06 GMT

Mentions of the buzzword heterogeneous computing have been on the rise in the past few years and will continue to be heard for years to come, because heterogeneous computing is here to stay. What is heterogeneous computing, and why is it becoming the norm? How do we deal with it, from both the software side and the hardware side? This article provides answers to some of these questions and presents different points of view on others.

There's No Such Thing as a General-purpose Processor

David Chisnall — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 13:36:49 GMT

There is an increasing trend in computer architecture to categorize processors and accelerators as "general purpose." Of the papers published at this year's International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2014), nine out of 45 explicitly referred to general-purpose processors; one additionally referred to general-purpose FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays), and another referred to general-purpose MIMD (multiple instruction, multiple data) supercomputers, stretching the definition to the breaking point. This article presents the argument that there is no such thing as a truly general-purpose processor and that the belief in such a device is harmful.

You Don't Know Jack about Shared Variables or Memory Models

Hans-J Boehm, Sarita V. Adve — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:44:21 GMT

A Google search for "Threads are evil" generates 18,000 hits, but threads are ubiquitous. Almost all of the processes running on a modern Windows PC use them. Software threads are typically how programmers get machines with multiple cores to work together to solve problems faster. And often they are what allow user interfaces to remain responsive while the application performs a background calculation.

Computing without Processors

Satnam Singh — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:47:55 GMT

From the programmer's perspective the distinction between hardware and software is being blurred. As programmers struggle to meet the performance requirements of today's systems, they will face an ever increasing need to exploit alternative computing elements such as GPUs (graphics processing units), which are graphics cards subverted for data-parallel computing, and FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays), or soft hardware.

Discipline and Focus

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:03:30 GMT

Discipline and Focus - Transcript

Transcript of interview with Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.

MICHAEL VIZARD: Hello, and welcome to ACM Queuecasts. I'm your host, Mike Vizard, and joining me today to discuss large scale computing initiatives is Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon. Welcome, Werner. How are you doing?

WERNER VOGELS: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.

DOA with SOA

Alex Bell — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 15:01:31 GMT

It looks like today is finally the day that we all knew was coming. It was only a matter of time. An ambulance has just pulled up to haul away Marty the Software Manager after his boss pummeled him for failing to deliver on promises of money savings, improved software reuse, and reduced time to market that had been virtually guaranteed merely by adopting SOA (service-oriented architecture). Everything could have been so different for Marty. If only there had been a red-hot market for a software application that fetched the price of London gold, converted the price from pounds to dollars, calculated the shipping costs for the desired quantity, and then returned a random verse from the King James Bible. As opposed to the currently unfolding scenario involving an ambulance, Marty's mental vision was one of a Brinks truck speeding to the scene to empty coffers buckling under the strain of overflowing cash.

A Conversation with John Hennessy and David Patterson

Charlene O'Hanlon — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:20:49 GMT

As authors of the seminal textbook, 'Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach', John Hennessy and David Patterson probably don't need an introduction. You've probably read them in college or, if you were lucky enough, even attended one of their classes. Since rethinking, and then rewriting, the way computer architecture is taught, both have remained committed to educating a new generation of engineers with the skills to tackle today's tough problems in computer architecture, Patterson as a professor at Berkeley and Hennessy as a professor, dean, and now president of Stanford University.

On Plug-ins and Extensible Architectures

Dorian Birsan — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 09:33:20 GMT

On Plug-ins and Extensible Architectures

Extensible application architectures such as Eclipse offer many advantages, but one must be careful to avoid “plug-in hell.”

DORIAN BIRSAN, ECLIPSE

In a world of increasingly complex computing requirements, we as software developers are continually searching for that ultimate, universal architecture that allows us to productively develop high-quality applications. This quest has led to the adoption of many new abstractions and tools. Some of the most promising recent developments are the new pure plug-in architectures.

What began as a callback mechanism to extend an application has become the very foundation of applications themselves. Plug-ins are no longer just add-ons to applications; today’s applications are made entirely of plug-ins. This field has matured quite a bit in the past few years, with significant contributions from a number of successful projects.