Fork/Join - The End of the Road for FPGA/GPU/ASIC Gang?

Steve W sent this article from IBM - Java Theory and Practise: Stick a fork in it

"One of the additions to the java.util.concurrent packages coming in Java™ 7 is a framework for fork-join style parallel decomposition. The fork-join abstraction provides a natural mechanism for decomposing many algorithms to effectively exploit hardware parallelism."

Steve says "Looks like java 7 will have built-in support for the Fork/Join pattern (i.e. similar to what Erlang has and what the Squeak guys have been talking about)"

Is this the end for the short-lived FPGA/GPU bandwagon? It could well be - with massively multi-core chips round the corner, they are considerably more attractive an option with their on core FPU and low-latency cache etc. Solves a whole lot of issues around buying and supporting esoteric hardware it would seem.

Talk: Erlang for Five Nines by Francesco Cesarini

Looks like an opportunity for a beer afterwards?

"Francesco Cesarini will be presenting the concurrent soft real time functional programming language Erlang and its rapidly growing community. He will describe why Erlang programs are generally 4 - 10 times shorter than their counterparts in Java, C and C++ achieving 99,999% availability. Ongoing research projects in the UK and overseas which will be covered, including refactoring, AI, type systems and control systems for robots. The talk will also go into why Erlang, originally invented to handle the next generation of Telecom products, has been successful in a much wider range of sectors including banking and e-commerce. "

Date: Thursday, 13th December 2007

Time:18:30-20:30

Venue:
Skills Matter
1 Sekforde Street
London EC1R 0BE
Near Farringdon Rail/Tube

Registration http://skillsmatter.com/menu/85