[PRL] Fwd: Parrot and Multi-threading

[Mitchell Wand]

The hot languages for multi-core:  Erlang, Haskell, and...  Perl?

Anybody notice what's missing from this list?-)

Anybody want to look into Parrot and multicore?

--Mitch

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mitch <mwand1 at gmail.com>
Date: Oct 10, 2007 8:15 AM
Subject: Parrot and Multi-threading
To: wand at ccs.neu.edu





Sent to you by Mitch via Google Reader:


Parrot and Multi-threading<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/oreilly/radar/atom/%7E3/163016584/parrot_and_mult.html>
via O'Reilly Radar <http://radar.oreilly.com/> by Tim O'Reilly on 9/29/07

By Tim O'Reilly

Over on the O'Reilly Network, Kevin
Farnham<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2168>has an
interesting blog
post<http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2007/09/open_source_thoughts_parrot_an_1.html>about
the connection between
Parrot <http://www.parrotcode.org/> and the arrival of multi-core processors
(Radar posts<http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=site:radar.oreilly.com+multicore&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8>.)
Kevin makes a number of good points, especially how changing fundamentals
can help a technology to "arrive." (Think of how Ruby on Rails made Ruby
suddenly the language of choice after ten years as a second-stringer, or how
multicore is renewing interest in languages like Erlang and
Haskell<http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/concurrent_prog_1.html>.)
Kevin is also absolutely right about how multi-core will affect even home
computing.

Sometimes a technology is invented, and the time simply isn't right, the
need at the moment for solutions that apply that technology is nearly
non-existent, though many people readily admit it's a "wonderful"
technology. I wonder if this might apply to a certain extent to Parrot prior
to the age of many-core computing?

In a few years, inexpensive PCs will have 8, 16, or more processing cores.
Some people doubt that the average home or office user is going to have any
use for all these cores. I think that's like saying "no one will ever need
more than 640K of RAM." Once it's possible for the average home or office
user to apply algorithms and image analysis and video processing and stock
market simulators that were previously available only on high-end
workstations in data centers, you cannot tell me they won't want to do this.


 ...

I doubt that applying conventional low-level threads is going to be an
efficient way to accomplish this in terms of programming time (I've worked
at this level for a long time). But on the other side: no one is going to
want to convert the mass of existing software platforms/applications that
could potentially apply these computation libraries, into C++ or C. A
convenient means to enable a broad spectrum of languages to call
multithreaded C++, C, and Fortran libraries is going to be needed.
Otherwise, again we face enormous software development inefficiency, as a
separate interface has to be constructed for each library for each calling
language. That's not a solution that is going to fly, in my opinion.

It seems to me that Parrot is an excellent candidate for addressing this
problem. If this is the case, the Parrot team may soon find itself lent
increasing support from independent developers, and possibly from companies
who recognize the need for this capability with respect to their own
applications.

I don't think this need was really there when PC performance could be
improved simply through ever-increasing clock speeds. Single-threaded
software that did a few simple calculations was fine then. Multicore,
however, changes everything. As highly-scalable multithreaded computation /
simulation libraries become available, and people realize they want them,
and developers realize they need to be able to call these libraries from
every language platform, Parrot's time may arrive.

 Kevin's suggestion that Parrot may solve a big problem for multi-core
programming also suggests that the wait for Perl 6 may not have been in
vain. (I've always hesitated to count out Larry Wall, one of the true
geniuses of programming, and he's backed up by some other great
programmers.)

Disclosure: a couple of people on the Parrot team, including Allison Randal
and chromatic, work for O'Reilly.
 <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Ef/oreilly/radar/atom?a=yTTdtIwb>
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Ef/oreilly/radar/atom?a=rbZyP7CE>
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Ef/oreilly/radar/atom?a=fak6yqVV>
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Ef/oreilly/radar/atom?a=0WYka3sR>




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