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Re: Next Big Thing

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On 8/16/2011 12:17 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 16, 2011 10:51:40 AM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>> On the other hand, while the "right" way to make progress, from the
>> programmer's point of view, would be to make chips with just one
>> processor on them, but made from some exotic material so they could
>> run at a clock rate 20 GHz.
>
> I know plenty of programmers who can program parallel machines. Its just that we call them logic designers.....potentially the most embarisingly parallel problem ever.
>
> But, and more importantly, this is the cross product of vonNeumann architecture and procedural programming languages.


One of my "I wish I had time for it" projects:

I think that some of the ideas in RTL languages, hardware design 
languages, could very usefully be placed into conventional programming 
languages.

I think that this would lead to making some programs easier to debug, 
less buggy - and probably also, as a side effect, would make code more 
parallel.



I have already talked about how, back when I was an undergrad Programmer 
on Duty, I would teach people to use a concurrent assignment construct

E.g. something like

       cur.next := node,
       cur.next.prev := node,
       node.next := cur.next,
       node.prev:= cur

getting translated into an approp[riate sequence, that may involve temps 
(or may not).


This is exactly the sort of thing that people used to hardware languages 
are used to doing.

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Next Big Thing kenney@cix.compulink.co.uk - 2011-08-16 09:47 -0500
  Re: Next Big Thing Stephen Fuld <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> - 2011-08-16 08:24 -0700
    Re: Next Big Thing Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2011-08-16 08:51 -0700
      Re: Next Big Thing MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> - 2011-08-16 12:17 -0700
        Re: Next Big Thing "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-08-16 18:00 -0700
          Re: Next Big Thing Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"> - 2011-08-17 08:19 +0200
            Re: Next Big Thing Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> - 2011-08-17 12:40 +0000
            Re: Next Big Thing "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-08-17 08:20 -0700
              Re: Next Big Thing MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> - 2011-08-17 10:43 -0700
                Re: Next Big Thing nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-08-17 18:19 +0100
                Re: Next Big Thing "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-08-17 23:39 -0700
                Re: Next Big Thing nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-08-18 07:27 +0100
  Re: Next Big Thing torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2011-08-17 10:49 +0200
    Re: Next Big Thing Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2011-08-17 05:37 -0700
  Re: Next Big Thing mac <acolvin@efunct.com> - 2011-08-18 22:23 +0000
  Re: Next Big Thing Morten Reistad <first@last.name> - 2011-08-24 20:44 +0200
    Re: Next Big Thing nmm1@cam.ac.uk - 2011-08-24 20:23 +0100

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