Malcolm Yoke Hean Low

November 2009
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Compilers and More: OpenCL Promises and Potential

Posted on Saturday, September 12, 2009 at 12:49 PM by Malcolm

In this article, Michael Wolfe from PGI discusses different aspects of OpenCL. Given all the hype, what can we expect from OpenCL? Is it really simple? Is it portable? Will it replace other parallel programming models?

Posted in HPC (RSS)

Ebook: HPC for Dummies

Posted on Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 12:37 AM by Malcolm

This special edition eBook from Sun and AMD shares details on real-world uses of HPC, explains the different types of HPC, guides you on how to choose between different suppliers, and provides benchmarks and guidelines you can use to get your system up and running. Get it here.

Edited on: Thursday, September 10, 2009 12:57 AM

Posted in General (RSS) , HPC (RSS)

Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?

Posted on Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 12:35 AM by Malcolm

An interesting article by Tom DeMarco, author of the 1979 book "Structured Analysis and System Specification" and inventor of the data flow diagram.

Edited on: Thursday, July 16, 2009 12:42 AM

Posted in General (RSS)

An Introduction to Parallel Programming - Module 1: Performance Tuning

Posted on Monday, July 06, 2009 at 1:57 PM by Malcolm

A seven part series from Sun on the introduction to parallel programming. Part 1 is on performance tuning.

Edited on: Monday, July 06, 2009 3:52 PM

Posted in HPC (RSS)

Project Natal

Posted on Tuesday, June 02, 2009 at 1:11 PM by Malcolm

Microsoft has unveiled its new control system for the Xbox 360. Project Natal is a fully hands-free control system that will use face recognition and motion sensors to allow users to play games.

Edited on: Monday, July 06, 2009 1:59 PM

Posted in (RSS)

The Read Green Initiative

Posted on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 5:26 PM by Malcolm

The Read Green Initiative offers millions of people FREE access to an alternative, environmentally friendly way of enjoying favorite magazines, books and other publications. Simply select your free one-year digital subscription to any featured magazine and read it with Zinio's interactive reader.

Edited on: Friday, May 22, 2009 3:25 PM

Posted in General (RSS) , Research (RSS)

parallel_invoke() - Running Multiple Functions in Parallel using Intel Thread Building Block

Posted on Monday, April 06, 2009 at 4:46 PM by Malcolm

From this article, running multiple functions together with Intel Thread Building block is as simple as the following:

void Function1();
void Function2();
void Function3();

void RunFunctions() {
tbb::parallel_invoke(Function1, Function2, Function3);
}

Edited on: Monday, April 06, 2009 4:49 PM

Posted in HPC (RSS)

NTU supports Earth Hour

Posted on Monday, March 23, 2009 at 3:45 PM by Malcolm

Edited on: Monday, March 30, 2009 9:25 AM

Posted in General (RSS)

Cloud Computing for Dummy

Posted on Wednesday, February 04, 2009 at 10:53 PM by Malcolm

This video in YouTube gives an easy to understand explanation of what Cloud Computing is.

Edited on: Monday, February 09, 2009 9:00 AM

Posted in HPC (RSS)

Free Wireless Broadband Access to NTU Wifi Network via SMS Registration

Posted on Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 9:07 AM by Malcolm

(Source) Visitors to NTU campus with mobile phone can now enjoy free, campus-wide seamless wireless broadband access with speed of up to 54Mbps.

To register for the free wireless access day account, simply SMS the keyword 'register' to the phone number 98635582. The visitor will receive via SMS the account username in the format ASSOC\ and a password for access to the NTUwireless network.

Edited on: Thursday, January 22, 2009 9:19 AM

Posted in General (RSS)

Leap Year Bug in Microsoft Zune Player

Posted on Tuesday, January 06, 2009 at 12:45 PM by Malcolm

On December 31, 2008, every Zune 30 device freezes due to a leap year bug in a driver from Freescale Semiconductor in a "while loop". Obviously a leap year test case is not carried out on the driver. See this article for details. Edited on: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 3:20 PM

Posted in General (RSS) , Teaching (RSS)

Four Paths to HPC using Java

Posted on Friday, December 19, 2008 at 1:19 AM by Malcolm

This article from JDJ gives a high-level description of four approaches using fork/join framework, Pervasive DataRush, Terracotta, and Hadoop for writing parallel applications in Java.

Edited on: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 7:18 PM

Posted in HPC (RSS)

Parallel Programming: Three Things You Must Teach

Posted on Friday, December 19, 2008 at 12:53 AM by Malcolm

From Intel Software College, this series of three lectures provides an introduction to parallel programming.

Module 1. Recognizing Potential Parallelism

Module 2. Shared Memory and Threads

Part 1

Part 2

Module 3. Programming with OpenMP

Part 1

Part 2

Edited on: Monday, March 30, 2009 9:37 AM

Posted in HPC (RSS)

Google Code University - Introduction to Parallel Programming and MapReduce

Posted on Friday, December 19, 2008 at 12:40 AM by Malcolm

This tutorial from the Google Code University covers the basics of parallel programming and the MapReduce programming model. The pre-requisites are significant programming experience with a language such as C++ or Java, and data structures & algorithms.

Posted in General (RSS) , HPC (RSS) , Research (RSS)

Obama Wins Historic US Election

Posted on Wednesday, November 05, 2008 at 11:09 PM by Malcolm

Edited on: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 11:31 PM

Posted in General (RSS)

Understanding Parallel Performance - How do we know we've succeeded?

Posted on Monday, November 03, 2008 at 1:22 PM by Malcolm

In this article, Microsoft software architect Herb Sutter discusses some key issues to keep in mind for accurately analyzing the real performance of parallel code. The article uses simple example code to point out basic considerations and common costs in developing parallel programs.

Edited on: Monday, November 03, 2008 9:33 PM

Posted in (RSS)

Multi-agent, Parallel Processing, Robotic, Warehousing

Posted on Saturday, November 01, 2008 at 7:50 PM by Malcolm

No Hands: Machines do the heavy lifting at a Staples Denver facility.

This article from the July issue of IEEE Spectrum describes a state-of-the-art agent-based robotic warehousing system. Unlike traditional warehouse where operators go around the warehouse picking orders, in this system, swarms of robots controlled by an agent-based scheduling, dispatching and traffic control system, worked in parallel to bring shelves to the operators for picking. The system has already been deployed by Staples, Walgreens and Zappos.

Posted in General (RSS) , Tech (RSS)

10 Great Tech Books

Posted on Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 6:59 PM by Malcolm

From the July issue of IEEE Spectrum, below are 10 great general-interest books about technology.

The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski
Mirror Worlds; or, The Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How it Will Happen and What it Will Mean by David Gelernter
A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing by David Kahn
Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

The links to these books on Amazon are listed in this page.

Posted in General (RSS) , Tech (RSS)

Professor Who Wrote 200,000+ Books

Posted on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at 12:17 PM by Malcolm

This interesting article describes how a management science professor make use of publicly available data on internet and computer AI to automatically "generate" 200,000 books and publishes and sells them for profit.

Edited on: Saturday, October 18, 2008 12:18 PM

Posted in General (RSS) , Tech (RSS)

Programming Languages - 6 Scripting Languages Your Developers Wish You'd Let Them Use

Posted on Friday, October 17, 2008 at 10:24 AM by Malcolm

Links to Programming Languages

6 Scripting Languages Your Developers Wish You'd Let Them Use

Edited on: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 2:39 PM

Posted in General (RSS) , Research (RSS) , Tech (RSS)

Web page of Malcolm Yoke Hean Low, School of Computer Engineering, NTU