Wellington
There was some serious brainpower assembled at the recent
Some of the subject matter was way-beyond the once over lightly understanding that I have ofcomputers and computing. But the clear message was that there’s currently a big gap between whatmulticore computers (many cores on one chip) are capable of, and the programs to run them.
As an analogy, it is as if a car engine has eight cylinders, but there’s only fuel gettingthrough to one or two of them – vastly decreasing its possible performance.
Put another way, multicore hardware is way, way ahead of multicore software. (When you considerthat 64+ cores on a chip are now being manufactured, it is obvious, as has often been stated, thathardware capability is no longer an issue). How this clear gap is resolved is very much a problem insearch of an answer.
It would’ve been good to see a heavier concentration of government and corporate ITheavyweights at the two-day conference held at the Wellington Town Hall.
The line-up of speakers would grace any northern hemisphere conference (and no doubt pull inhundreds of attendees), looking over the horizon at where the actual bits and bytes of computing isheading.
In other words, as opposed to the frothy apps and gee-whiz retail end of things, this conferencewas about where all the hard work of computers, memory, transactions and data crunching takesplace.
One of the underlying themes of the conference put together by Oamaru-based Nicolas Erdody (
The (parallel) programming required to take advantage of multicore, where the instructions to andfrom each core has to inform and be informed by every other core, is not easy.
As
And one thing that hasn’t been decided is what computer language is best suited for writingparallel programming is still unclear – and indeed numbers of languages could evolve.
New Zealand has the opportunity to be a niche operator and software supplier in this emergingworld – providing answers where others find it too difficult.
Ex-patriot Kiwi Dr Ian Foster (originally from Wellington, and these days among other roles theProfessor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago) helped frame some of the alreadyapparent and emerging possibilities capable through multicore in his keynote address.
(His, and the other presenters talks can be found
He described the exponentialism that multicores potentially provide as offering new paradigmsthat “can bring about huge transformations”.
Where he sees the grunt of multicore having near-future effects are:
- Digital visual effects
- Digital fabrication (additive manufacturing)
- Industrial internet (heavy industrial internet)
- Data analytics (big data)
Foster says multicore is a hugely disruptive technology – New Zealand has an opportunity toride its wave, or (especially if the country doesn’t build a second fibre optic cable linking usto the rest of the world) be left behind.
Disclaimer:
I helped write some of the publicity and press releases around Multicore World 2013. The thoughtsabove are mine alone however.