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Programming

Bjarne Stroustrup On Concepts, C++0x 346

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the down-and-out-but-not-over dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Danny Kalev has an interview with Bjarne Stroustrup about the failure of concepts, the technical issues of concepts, whether the ISO committee's days are over, and whether C++ is at a dead-end. 'I don't think that concepts were doomed to fail. Also, I don't think concepts were trying to fix many things or to transform C++ into an almost new language. They were introduced to do one thing: provide direct language support to the by-far dominant use of templates: generic programming. They were intended to allow direct expression of what people already state in comments, in design documents, and in documentation. Every well-designed template is written with a notion of what is required from its arguments. For good code, those requirements are documented (think of the standard's requirements tables). That is, today most templates are designed using an informal notion of concepts.'"

Comment Re:Isn't there a fundamental problem... (Score 1) 176

by Eddy Luten (#28985439) Attached to: AMD's OpenCL Allows GPU Code To Run On X86 CPUs

Nothing stops anyone from using the APIs, I'm talking about a working implementation.

OpenGL is supported on pretty much all available platforms and has a standard implementation on them: Windows has opengl32.dll, Linux has Mesa3d, and Apple also has a default implementation.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here that an API is worthless without an implementation: the library containing the actual functionality. What are you loading if you don't have a IHV implementation available? Nothing. Just like OpenGL, OpenCL will need a default, software, implementation supported on all platforms.

And I can promise you that Microsoft will not be jumping on this OpenCL bandwagon (providing a platform default software implementation) with their development Direct3D Compute Shaders and the fact that Microsoft is no longer a Khronos partner. If they do in the next version of Windows I'll be very pleasantly surprised.

Comment Re:GPUs are dying - the cycle continues (Score 1) 176

by Eddy Luten (#28976573) Attached to: AMD's OpenCL Allows GPU Code To Run On X86 CPUs

CPUs are infamously bad at processing floating point operations, this is the reason that dedicated GPUs were invented in the first place. A graphics processor like the GTX 285 has 240 stream processors that are manufactured for processing floating point numbers but really bad at integer operations. A CPU like a Core 2 Quad has four cores that are really good at integer operations but requires CPU extensions like SSE to do high performance floating point operations.

Both Intel and AMD are currently manufacturing CPU/GPU hybrids that would kind of balance both these worlds: Larrabee a GPU-like addon, AMD Fusion an on-chip solution. We'll see what kind of API hell they will bring.

Comment Re:Isn't there a fundamental problem... (Score 2, Interesting) 176

by Eddy Luten (#28975709) Attached to: AMD's OpenCL Allows GPU Code To Run On X86 CPUs

IMO, the fundamental problem with OpenCL is the same as with OpenAL, which is that Operating System vendors don't provide a standard implementation as is done with OpenGL.

(Bus) speed isn't an issue as creating a CPU or GPU context requires a specific creation flag, so one would know what the target platform is.
Space

Surface Plume On Betelgeuse Imaged 51

Posted by Soulskill from the it-looks-hungry dept.
BJ_Covert_Action writes "Astronomy Now is running a piece regarding some new, exquisitely detailed pictures taken of Betelgeuse, a star in the constellation Orion. Betelgeuse is classified as a supergiant star, and its diameter is approximately 1,000 times that of the sun. Two teams of astronomers used ESO's 'Very large Telescope,' its NACO instruments, and an imaging technique known as 'Lucky Imaging' to take some of the most detailed pictures of Betelgeuse to date. The new pictures reveal a gas plume on Betelgeuse which extends from the surface of the star a distance greater than that between our sun and Neptune. The images also show several other 'boiling' spots on the surface of Betelgeuse, revealing the surface to be quite tumultuous. Currently, it is known that stars of Betelgeuse's size eject the equivalent mass of the Earth into space every year. This recent astronomy work will help researchers determine the mechanics behind such ejections." Update — 8/05 at 13:31 by SS: Here's the original press release from the European Southern Observatory, since the Astronomy Now page has slowed to a crawl.
Software

How Wolfram Alpha's Copyright Claims Could Change Software 258

Posted by timothy from the my-patent-app-will-involve-prayer-wheels-and-combinatorics dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that Wolfram Research's claim to copyright of results returned by the Wolfram Alpha engine could have significant ramifications for the software industry. 'While software companies routinely retain sole ownership of their software and license it to users, Wolfram Research has taken the additional step of claiming ownership of the output of the software itself,' McAllister writes, pointing out that it is 'at least theoretically possible to copyright works generated by machines.' And, under current copyright law, if any Wolfram claim to authorship of the output of its engine is upheld, by extension the same rules will apply to other information services in similar cases as well. In other words, 'If unique presentations based on software-based manipulation of mundane data are copyrightable, who retains what rights to the resulting works?'"

Comment Re:Not the first time... (Score 2, Insightful) 492

by Eddy Luten (#28881695) Attached to: CentOS Project Administrator Goes AWOL
Just one word came to mind when I read the blurb on the CentOS front page: unprofessional. Seeing a message like that on the site of the developer of my operating system would scare the crap out of me. Commercial software packages go on hiatus sometimes, nobody knows why, but at least they (AFAIK) don't scare their user base away by making a very public announcement about an individual teammate.
Supercomputing

US Supercomputer Lead Sparks Russian Govt's Competitive Drive 74

Posted by timothy from the ever-since-that-damn-satellite dept.
CWmike writes "Russia's launch of Sputnik in 1957 triggered a crisis of confidence in the US that helped drive the creation of a space program. Now, Russia is comparing the US's achievements in supercomputing with theirs, and they don't like what they see. In a speech on Tuesday, Russia's President, Dmitry Medvedev, criticized his country's IT industry almost to the point of sarcasm for failing to develop supercomputing technology, and urged a dramatic change in Russia's use of high-performance computing. Medvedev, at the opening address of a Security Council Meeting on Supercomputers in Moscow, told attendees that 476 out of the 500 supercomputers on the Top500 list were manufactured in the United States. 'Therefore, in general, our situation is very difficult,' he said."
Earth

Submission + - Are Compact Fluorescents Really Green? (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "Ever since An Inconvenient Truth debuted houses, businesses, and even entire nations have switched from incandescent bulbs to more energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps. However concerns have grown recently over the toxic mercury contained within CFLs, and competing technologies like LEDs and OLEDs are casting a shadow over the bulb's eco merits. An in-depth report explores the current state of the debate and where the future of energy efficient lighting is heading."
Space

Submission + - Transparent aluminium is 'new state of matter' (physorg.com) 2

Submitted by Professor_Quail
Professor_Quail writes: Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminum' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.
Games

Which Game Series Would You Reboot? 1120

Posted by Soulskill from the star-control-please dept.
Franchise reboots are all the rage these days in Hollywood, and the trend is starting to creep into the games industry as well. The Guardian's games blog is running a story discussing a few examples and pondering likely candidates for future reboots. Quoting: "If anything, the concept of the reboot makes more sense in the videogame sector than it does in movies. For a start, games are complex entities, with each new iteration in a familiar series adding many, many hours of fresh narrative content. Entering, say, the Zelda, Resident Evil, Half-Life, Dragon Quest or Metal Gear worlds at this stage must be massively intimidating — even if the developers go to great lengths to make each entry work as a singular, self-contained entity within the canon. Also, videogames are going through a paradigm shift in terms of popular appeal at the moment. The faithful audience of young males has been joined by new demographics brought in by the Wii, PC casual games, and now the iPhone. Many of these people may be vaguely aware of long-running game brands, but won't have a clue about the key characters, sign post events and basic gameplay mechanisms." So, which series (or individual title) would you like to see rebooted?

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