
Is multicore hype or reality? - iamelgringo
http://embedded.com/columns/technicalinsights/205918952?pgno=1
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spitfire
The more interesting point made in that article wasn't about multicore. But
was actually about the distance from the CPU that memory is from the modern
CPU. Remember when programmers were hand counting instruction timings and code
size on their 386? Well that's become even more important today.

If you can get your code size into L2 (or even better L1), you can win a
factor of 1000x speedup. One reason why I still use a compiled language.

~~~
Hexstream
"One reason why I still use a compiled language."

Nitpick: There's no such thing as a "compiled" or "interpreted" _language_. A
specific language _implementation_ (a runtime) might be more interpreted than
compiled or vice-versa, but even if some language traditionally only provides
interpreting or compiling implementations, there's nothing preventing someone
from writing one in the other style, though the nature of the language might
make some approaches less appropriate.

Isn't there this IronRuby that runs Ruby, a traditionally interpreted
language, on the JVM in compiled fashion? Also, I'm sure Lisp was considered
for a long time an interpreted _language_ but today there are fast compiling
implementations available such as SBCL. I'm sure there are many more examples.

A compiler is really just a partial evaluator (correct me if I'm wrong?).

~~~
oconnor0
IronRuby is for .NET. JRuby is for the JVM.

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mishmash
Here's the print link, let me know if this isn't cool here on HN.

[http://embedded.com/columns/technicalinsights/205918952?prin...](http://embedded.com/columns/technicalinsights/205918952?printable=true)

~~~
ambition
It's generally preferred to submit the print link in the first place when
available. So, yes, it's cool here on HN.

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nazgulnarsil
beyond the aforementioned embarrassingly parallel problems I don't think we'll
see much performance increase once we reach the point where each app/process
is running on its own core.

~~~
JulianMorrison
On my Linux machine, not even a server but just a desktop, there are 111
running processes. There's room for growth in multi-core yet.

~~~
wmf
Don't you mean there are 111 sleeping processes? It's unlikely that a desktop
would have so many runnable processes.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Ah, my use of "running" was misleading. That's just a crude line count of the
"ps ax" listing. (And I probably counted the header line - d'oh!) Yes, most
are sleeping.

