Re: [Caml-list] thousands of CPU cores

[Oliver Bandel <oliver@first.in-berlin.de>]

Zitat von J C <jhc0033@gmail.com>:

> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Oliver Bandel
> <oliver@first.in-berlin.de> wrote:
>
> > For example, if you have a non-profit research project,
> > you can use the BOINC infrastructure, which provides
> > about 580000 PCs to help you :)
> >
> >
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Open_Infrastructure_for_Network_Computing
> >
> > There is no Shared-Mem as we know it from our local PCs, there
> > is distributed calculation around the whole planet.
> >
> > Threads will not help there ;-)
>
> But on each of those PCs there may be 1000 cores in the near future.
[...]

Yes, maybe.
I don't say that global networked computer power substitutes
multicore-machines.
But on multicore-machines one could use multiple processes.

And I don't say that threads will not help sometimes,
I just think, they are over estimated.

BTW: I've forgotten where the article was, but there was an
introductional article on programming of encryption algoritms,
and the author said: "don't use multithreaded code", because
it's too easy to have weak code that makes the whole system
unsafe.

I agree with him.
But I also think, not only in encryption-programs
threads should be avoided, if possible. I don't mean
never use threads, I just mean: use only, if really necessary.

Multiple processes are less sensitive to programming errors
than multithreaded code.
processes give you encapsulation. If one process crashes,
the others do not. If you crash one thread, the whole application
is affected.


Ciao,
   Oliver