Wellington
Lurking below the IT headline generating buzz of Apps and social media and smart phones is a corechange racing in parallel with its sometimes perceived more glamorous cousins.
The very way computers and computing itself, works, has changed. The change is, literally,multicore.
Until quite recently, most computer devices have been a single core. Over the past 50 yearsthere’s been huge improvements in these processor’s performance and scalability. Software forsuch single processors has been written sequentially - that is, one step after another. But packingever more into smaller and smaller bundles results in ever more heat generation – and with it theneed to keep computers cool.
There’s also only so much calculating that’s able to be carried out when you’re essentiallytrying to funnel the results through one core.
However, “serial computing is dead, and the parallel computing revolution has begun based on amulticore architecture,” says Nicolas Erdody. “This offers virtually unlimited processing powerwithout the heat and size constraints of its single core ancestor,” says the Oamaru-basedtechnology and business adviser ( Erdody Consulting ).
Multicores (more than one processor) became mainstream in early 2006, and brought with it afundamental shift by the software development community. Erdody says early adopters of what he calls‘Parallelism’ discovered heavy costs associated with attempting to retrofit existing single corelanguages and approaches to multicores. Parallelism allows problems to be divided into parts thatare solved simultaneously (see a wikipedia explanation
“The move to parallel computing is too important to get wrong,” he says. “It needs to bedone right the first time, or you will be doomed to do it over and over again.”
At the same time, doing nothing is not an option. Erdody says ageing legacy systems will need tobe adapted to the new parallelism paradigm.
“The leap in power is enabling the development of revolutionary software in all areas andindustries,” he says. “Applications that were unthinkable only a few years ago are becoming areality, and it is a topic that affects every computer programmer on the planet.”
For those able and willing to embrace the changes that are required, combined with developmentsin big data, the cloud and the Internet, the potential rewards are massive he says.
It is part of the reason that Erdody is one of the organisers behind
“Anybody who is a programmer or interested in the wider fields of where computing is heading,should attend,” he says. “Multicore World is a conference for IT decision takers, being softwareleaders as well as senior managers looking to dramatically improve their organisations'performances. It should particularly be of interest for innovators in all areas, being economy,science or medicine”
Among the speakers and invitees are Intel’s director of software, and its senior researchscientist for OpenCL. The CSIRO’s senior software scientist who is the project leader for theSquare Kilometer Array is another speaker, as are Weta Digital CTO and GreenButton’s CEO.
USA and New Zealand investors, and senior executives and technical leaders from both countrieswill be in attendance in what Erdody describes as a unique opportunity to discuss the convergence ofbusiness and technology.
“We, New Zealand, has an opportunity to build a centre of excellence in multicore software andparallel computing from this country,” he says. “The infrastructure is in place to allow us todo it - what it requires is a vision to develop along these lines.”
McW 2012 will trigger a discussion about the present and future of the IT industry he says.Changes will occur whether or not people are aware of it, and “given that every company isbecoming a software company, you need to know what is happening right now and how it will affect youand your company,” Erdody says.
A comparison could be a change in a car’s performance from having a single engine, to powerplant situated at every wheel. Under such a scenario, the car’s exterior, its look, may remain thesame.
It’s performance, and what it is capable of, totally change however.
Likewise, the engines of how our increasingly ubiquitous computing devices operate is thenon-glamourous side of things.
But, understanding the mechanics drives the development of what is possible, where things cango.
Out of sight, but not necessarily out of mind, McW 2012 promises to be one of those seminalevents, where New Zealand has the potential to be at the front rather than at the rear of thepack.