IDF 2011: Ninja programming skills not required for many cores

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Many and multi-core processing offers tremendous benefits but you don’t have to be a specialist programmer to take advantage, according to Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer.

What’s more, the tech visionary claimed Intel plans to bring down the power usage of systems running multiple cores by a factor of 300 over the next 10 years.

Our goal at Intel is to banish ninja programmers forever.

“There has been a lot of angst [about many core processors],” he said during the final keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

“You don’t have to be a ninja programmer. Many core programmers look just like you and me. Our goal at Intel is to banish ninja programmers forever.”

He added: “So far people are reporting great results and, most importantly for us, an easy transition from multi-core to many core."

Rattner was joined on stage by CERN researcher Andrzej Nowak who talked about the work his team is doing at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using a machine sporting 250,000 Intel multi-core processors.

“It’s a huge machine that produces a large amount of data. We only keep a small amount,” Nowak said, adding the lab handles between 15 and 25 petabytes of data each year.

“Intel has delivered a machine that really works well with dense code. It is very important for us to focus on many core scalability. We will take any amount of cores you can throw at us!”

Rattner issued a call to action to the assembled delegates of developers and partners to continue to think of new ideas and applications around multi and many core technology.

“We are at a very significant point in time. It’s a time when technology is no longer the limiting factor. What’s limiting us today is our imagination,” he said.

“If you can dream it, we can invent it together.”

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