Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson

Re: Re: Perfectly plausible

Ah, now you are talking. Proper Bond movie with no fewer than 7 James Bonds (well, 6 and one Jimmy Bond).

"Who is this le Chifre?"

"Nobody knows. Not even le Chifre."

UNIX has a card in its hand:

I ATEN'T DEAD!!

Spinners?

Where they using procrastinators to get the filming done quickly?

Mine is the one with "Thief of Time" in the pocket

Re: Re: I could use such power

Many image processing tools are easily broken up into small loads. The tools we develop are so-called connected filters in which data from all parts of the image may influence all other parts. Often you want to avoid this, but e.g. for analysis of complete road networks, you cannot predict which parts need to communicate with which other parts. To cut communication overhead down you need comparatively coarse grained parallellism.

We have been able to device a scheme (which we are now implementing) which cuts down local memory requirements from O(N) to O(N/Np + sqrt(N)), with N the number of pixels and Np the number of processor nodes. Normally you just require O(N/Np) per node. Communication overhead can be dropped from O(N) to O(sqrt(N) log(N)). This has moved the problem from the impossible to the "possible, but you need a coarse-grained cluster."

Of course, the first (shared memory) parallel algorithm for this filters dates from 2008, so we still have much to learn. Other problems in science can also require global interaction between particles (gravity has infinite reach). A lot of work is done cutting communication down, but this is often at the expense of accuracy.

All ProView has is their iP

sorry, I'll get me coat

Good point!

Small runs become much more interesting this way. Ultimately, one might envisage chip making to be commoditized like 3D printing is becoming a commodity. One off parts are becoming affordable (see LOHAN). Imagine designing your own ASIC chip from scratch rather than going the FPGA route. Design a schematic, send it off, have a wafer-full made, mounted and sent to you.

Far fetched now, but maybe some day.

What do you mean "a man can dream"? A man should dream!

Alternatively,

it is Microsoft trying to persuade users not to use IE at all

Not likely, I must admit, but it is an alternative explanation.

Just splice in some frog DNA?

Why are you assuming the Denisovans were related to the French?

Monsieur, you offend me, we French are related to the tall, graceful Cro-Magnon!

Don't you just

plug the iron into the shirt

Mine is the one with "Danger, High Voltage" on the back

Not if you have ever memorized

"O, Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me Right Now Sweety"

for a stellar evolution exam.

Mine is the one with the sky atlas in the pocket.

Ah, so the blancmanges were really jellyfish in disguise?

Mine is the one with "Angus Podgorny Fan Club" on the back

Not yet.

But I am building them a mini-Dobsonian telescope (and they are helping me build it). I somehow do not think keeping them interested is going to be that hard, because they are showing promising signs of nerdiness already. Nerds are interested in things for their own sake, not just because other people think it is cool.

multi-tasking anti-ageing moisturiser?

But was it preemptive multi-tasking, cooperative multitasking, or did tasks genuinely run in parallel on 10 cores?

Making CMOS and CCD chips for digital cameras still does

Chemical magic is still needed, but not the way Arthur C. Clarke knew it.

I will still raise a pint to him. He has more imagination than most of us.

Wind?

Wasn't that the sneeze of the Great Green Arkleseizure?

Mine is the one with the H2G2 radio plays in the pocket

Precisely. I have no problems with people playing proper R&B (Ray Charles and the like)