At 09:12 AM 9/17/2006, Geoff Jacobs wrote:
Jim Lux wrote:
<snip>
>
> Yes, the software structure was badly designed for the interconnect.
> HOWEVER, the whole point of computing resources is that I really
> shouldn't have to design the whole software system around the
> peculiarities of the hardware platform.
It sure would be nice if software could be partitioned in an efficient
manner, including considerations of interconnect topology, with a
compiler flag. Alas, this we must still do ourselves.
I suspect that the number of people writing software for which there
IS a big dependence on interconnect properties AND for which the
compiler could actually do something useful, is fairly small
(probably more than I can count on my fingers and toes, but I doubt
it runs into the thousands).
This sort of falls in the compiler/optimizer category, and it's a
pretty non-trivial problem. Those few folks who actually write
compilers (as opposed to loading yet another syntax description into
yacc/lex) have got their hands full dealing with the easier
optimizations that are used by more people.
This is a strange sentiment to be displaying on this list, if I may say
so. Beowulfers sit further out on the frontier so they can derive more
performance from their hardware budgets. The consequence of this is
additional development time, application complexity, and sometimes
hardware specificity.
Well, yes... but one can dream, can't one? It's that "DWIM" (do what
i mean) compiler.
--
Geoffrey D. Jacobs
Go to the Chinese Restaurant,
Order the Special
James Lux, P.E.
Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Group
Flight Communications Systems Section
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109
tel: (818)354-2075
fax: (818)393-6875
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