From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <5978d69bfd72141dfdf2afb79ba4e7da@quanstro.net> References: <3aaafc130903031633n19ce8800ma5eeee44886bed52@mail.gmail.com> <5978d69bfd72141dfdf2afb79ba4e7da@quanstro.net> Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 20:54:08 -0500 Message-ID: <3aaafc130903031754v25f7db38y65f9863ebab6ff32@mail.gmail.com> From: "J.R. Mauro" To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [9fans] threads vs forks Topicbox-Message-UUID: aec14d6a-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 7:54 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >> I should have qualified. I mean *massive* parallelization when applied >> to "average" use cases. I don't think it's totally unusable (I >> complain about synchronous I/O on my phone every day), but it's being >> pushed as a panacea, and that is what I think is wrong. Don Knuth >> holds this opinion, but I think he's mostly alone on that, >> unfortunately. > > it's interesting that parallel wasn't cool when chips were getting > noticably faster rapidly. perhaps the focus on parallelization > is a sign there aren't any other ideas. Indeed, I think it is. The big manufacturers seem to have hit a wall with clock speed, done a full reverse, and are now just trying to pack more transistors and cores on the chip. Not that this is evil, but I think this is just as bad as the obsession with upping the clock speeds in that they're too focused on one path instead of incorporating other cool ideas (i.e., things Transmeta was working on with virtualization and hosting foreign ISAs) > > - erik > >