Recording some good links

http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/

http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7407/1.html

Cilk++

With the advent of 16, 24 (and also 32?) cored machines, multi-core machines are foraying in a big way. Most applications programmed aren't multi-core aware and hence though multi-core hardware prices aren't daunting, the applications can't really scale to it. Redesigning the legacy apps for multi-core aware is not a small task. However suites like Cilk++ do make it so.

Cilk++ comes with a complete suite of compiler, run time system et al, which enables legacy applications that have been designed with no scaling in sight to be multi-core aware with minimal changes. Believe it or not, your code requires as less change as using three keywords effectively to indicate parallelism and synchronization – cilk_for, clik_spawn (for areas which have recursive calls or the types to make use of the multi-cores), cilk_sync (gather results from all the calls). Cilk provides race detector and reducers (race free global variables) as well.

 

To know more, read this:

http://www.cilk.com/multicore-products/cilk-solution-overview/

On using the three keywords to indicate parallelism, the Cilk++ compiler compiles the serial code into multi-core enabled parallel application.

 

N-Queens Problem

A good starting point to understand how this can be used is the N-Queens problem: 

http://www.cilk.com/multicore-blog/bid/6381/Multicore-enabling-the-N-Queens-Problem-Using-Cilk. 

There are other problems discussed as well. You could track the cilk blog to know more.

 

And to know more about the Cilk language itself: 

http://supertech.csail.mit.edu/papers/cilk5.pdf

Python & Scalability

Was checking on Python scalability.

Found some good links
http://highscalability.com/youtube-architecture
http://highscalability.com/tags/python
http://www.python.org/about/success/strakt/ (This one uses Twisted as well)

Generally you can check here: http://www.python.org/about/success/

Couldn't resist this one: http://www.python.org/about/success/rackspace/

And yes, python is not only a scripting language, it is an object oriented programming language too!

A pat for Twisted is here as well:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39246546,00.htm

In search for an ORM

Sharan has been searching for an ORM for C++. Though we have been able to find many for Java, python etc; couldn't find one which is popular for C++.

A few that I found, though we yet to evaluate are:
http://soci.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-orm/
Database Template Library: http://dtemplatelib.sourceforge.net/

Found this one mentioned at a couple of places; but the page just refuses to open up
http://ceamus.com/objbuilder/

If anyone has any better suggestions, let me/sharan know.

wake_me_up or wake_me_not

We had a really tough problem to solve in the last few weeks and we finally got through it.. Every experience of solving a tough problem ends with sweet little learnings. And this time it was about "wake_up" functions on Linux. These functions don't seem to have good documentation anywhere and knowing the nuances of the different variants demands a lot of googling and reading :)
So was quite happy with this find, wherein a person has documented his learnings in one place.

http://groups.google.co.in/group/comp.os.linux.development.system/browse_
thread/thread/607517fcb4ecf29d/d752bf66a0a7bb48?lnk=st&q=wake_up_
interruptible+wake_up_interruptible_all#d752bf66a0a7bb48

And the equivalents of Mac can be found at
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming
/services/chapter_16_section_5.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000905-CH219-CHDIDIDF

Hope this will help others in pursuit of wake_up problems!

Macbook Air

Was reading reviews about MacBook Air and came across some very interesting one-liners on it

"It’s an expensive, disposable toy"
"Apple: Macbook Air inspires laptop Anorexia"
"Steve made a machine for himself, as ever."

Read some interesting stuff at
http://cultofmac.com/

What does GM stand for?

External beta testing is usually followed by GM build testing and subsequent release. So what is GM in the beta parlance? My project had been in the GM phase for quite a time. However I didn't bother to google for it throughout. Yesterday while reading an interview of an indie developer (Read Sweater), I read about Leopard's Golden Master not being released to Mac developers for testing before official release! And it was then, that I realised what the acronym GM meant. To confirm, I googled for the term which explained:

GM, or Gold Master, is what software is called when it has completed all phases of testing and is ready to be released to the general public

Ref:
http://beta.aol.com/projects.php?project=infocenter&loc=betaglossary#G12