9fans archive / 2007 / 04 / 561 /    prev next

From: "ron minnich" <rminnich@gma...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] speaking of kenc
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:54:53 -0700

On 4/28/07, Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> wrote:

>   I also see that computing in general is now on the brink of a new
> era where we would have to start exploiting parallelism and adapt
> our languages and models for that. And no, exploiting parallelism
> doesn't mean better OpenMP or better MPI. It means rethinking the
> way we do computing. And that, IMHO, means that Plan9 might just
> have another chance of entering mainstream computing. Mark my words,
> in 5-7 years -- POSIX threads and MPI are going to be as important
> as punch cards and COBOL are now.

I'd like to hope this is true. I wish I had not been hearing this
prediction for 10 years :-)

True story: I once had a chance to speed up someone's runtime by a
factor of 50, yes 50, and all they had to do was change one line in a
shell script -- actually, one COMMAND in one LINE. No good -- I had to
do it myself. HPC can be a frustrating business.

But, let's hope it's true that we get to get rid of our old software
baggage. I think it is criminal that people can get away with calling
MPI a "programming model".

Roman, let's plan to get together at a bar in 8 years -- 2015 -- and
drink a toast to the demise of MPI, OpenMP, POSIX threads, and all the
crazy stuff we do now :-)

Actually, not a bar: I'll host the party at my house I just bought :-)

BTW, just to whet appetites here -- assuming Usenix accepts our
poster, we're going to have a pretty cool "Plan 9 and HPC" display at
Usenix. You heard it here first. Hmm, I think I just joined the
marketing dept.

ron