Graham Clark - Slashdot User

An Open Source Compiler From CUDA To X86-Multicore 71

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @03:06PM from the abstraction-gains-a-layer dept.

Gregory Diamos writes "An open source project, Ocelot, has recently released a just-in-time compiler for CUDA, allowing the same programs to be run on NVIDIA GPUs or x86 CPUs and providing an alternative to OpenCL. A description of the compiler was recently posted on the NVIDIA forums. The compiler works by translating GPU instructions to LLVM and then generating native code for any LLVM target. It has been validated against over 100 CUDA applications. All of the code is available under the New BSD license."

Comment Re:Boy the IEA sounds so trustworthy...wait... (Score 1) 715

by Graham Clark on Thursday December 17, 2009 @10:58AM (#30473378) Attached to: Russians Claim More Climate Data Was Manipulated

The standard view on Polar Bear population levels is that they've rebounded since controls were put on hunting. This has, of course, absolutely nothing to do with the possibility of habitat loss hammering their numbers in the future.

Yellowstone Supervolcano Larger Than First Thought 451

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @11:50AM from the even-superer dept.

drewtheman writes "New studies of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park shows the plume and the magma chamber under the volcano are larger than first thought and contradicts claims that only shallow hot rock exists. University of Utah research professor of geophysics Robert Smith led four separate studies that verify a plume of hot and molten rock at least 410 miles deep that rises at an angle from the northwest."

Games Workshop Goes After Fan Site 174

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @05:03AM from the don't-anger-your-base dept.

mark.leaman writes "BoingBoing has a recent post regarding Games Workshop's aggressive posturing against fan sites featuring derivative work of their game products. 'Game publisher and miniature manufacturer Games Workshop just sent a cease and desist letter to boardgamegeek.com, telling them to remove all fan-made players' aids. This includes scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces — many of these created for long out of print, well-loved games...' As a lifelong hobby gamer of table, board, card and miniature games, I view this as pure heresy. It made me reject the idea of buying any Games Workshop (read Warhammer) products for my son this Christmas. Their fate was sealed, in terms of my wallet, after I Googled their shenanigans. In 2007 they forbid Warhammer fan films, this year they shut down Vassal Modules, and a while back they went after retailers as well. What ever happened to fair use?"

Volcanic Activity May Split Africa In Two 170

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 05, 2009 @05:04AM from the spit-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes 'Volcanic activity may split the African continent in two, creating a new ocean, say experts. This is due to a recent geological crack which has appeared in northeastern Ethiopia.'

Comment Re:The plane (Score 1) 582

by Graham Clark on Wednesday July 08, 2009 @01:34PM (#28625119) Attached to: Hitler's Stealth Fighter

The Mosquito was a very successful aircraft - there was a problem with a few Canadian-built ones vanishing crossing the Atlantic, I believe, but apart from that they were very solid. And very fast.

Comment They proved it? (Score 1) 582

by Graham Clark on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @03:18PM (#28456931) Attached to: Hitler's Stealth Fighter

All I've seen are statements that Northrop finds the plane stealthy. I've no problem with that. What I haven't seen are statements from them that the carbon inclusions are a significant part of this. The articles all imply that this is the case, but they don't directly quote anyone from Northrop saying so or mention a test that would specifically determine this.

I am sure that, as you say, those involved with the tests know what the contribution of the carbon was, but the articles are actually quite vague on the point.

Comment Have they proven it? (Score 1) 582

by Graham Clark on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @11:14AM (#28452789) Attached to: Hitler's Stealth Fighter

Whether it actually reduced radar signature is an issue here, and without doing a comparison of leading edges with and without the added carbon, how do we know that the slight signature wasn't simply due to the small size and low metal content?

Erlang's Creator Speaks About Its History and Prospects 48

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @09:28AM from the still-coy-on-the-meaning dept.

Seal writes "Erlang, originally created at Ericsson in 1986, is a functional programming language which was released as open source around 10 years ago and flourished ever since. In this Q&A, Erlang creator Joe Armstrong talks about its beginnings as a control program for a telephone exchange, its flexibility and its modern day usage in open source programs. 'In the Erlang world we have over twenty years of experience with designing and implementing parallel algorithms. What we lose in sequential processing speed we win back in parallel performance and fault-tolerance,' Armstrong said. He also mentions how multi-core processors pushed the development of Erlang and the advantages of hot swapping."

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