Thursday, September 15, 2011

Blog: Intel Code Lights Road to Many-Core Future

Intel Code Lights Road to Many-Core Future
EE Times (09/15/11) Rick Merritt

Intel's release of open source code for a data-parallel version of Javascript seeks to help mainstream programmers who use scripting languages tap the power of multicore processors. Intel's Justin Rattner says in an interview that there will be multiple programming models, and Parallel JS encompasses one such model. The language enhances performance for data-intensive, browser-based apps such as photo and video editing and three-dimensional gaming running on Intel chips. Rattner describes Parallel JS as "a pretty important step that gets us beyond the prevailing view that once you are beyond a few cores, multicore chips are only for technical apps." A later iteration of Parallel JS also will exploit the graphics cores currently incorporated into Intel's latest processors. In addition, Intel is working on ways to enhance modern data-parallel tools that operate general-purpose programs on graphics processors, and those tools could be issued next year, Rattner says. He notes that beyond that, data-parallel methods require a more basic change to boost power efficiency by becoming more asynchronous.

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