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A discussion with André LaMothe on multi-core programming, future computer technology, and artificial intelligence...

Until about the end of 2005 the race for faster computers and game systems was driven mainly by increases in the clock frequency of the processor. This largely determined the number of instructions that were processed per second, but with higher switching frequencies came higher temperatures, and a thermal barrier was reached above 3 GHz. To continue the progress in computing power chip manufacturers are beginning to multiply the number of processing cores rather than increasing the speed of a single core.

André LaMothe, computer scientist and author of many books on the programming topic, has recently designed a console system to teach the fundamentals of multi-core development. He has also agreed to discuss this topic with us as well as go a little further into the future and theoretical possibilities of computer science.

Q1. How exactly does multi-core pick up where increased clock speed left off?
A. Well, multi-core and multiprocessing has been around as long as computers have been actually, it's just a matter of cost/performance. Each generation has easily been able to double clock speeds and go to smaller sizes, but we are starting to hit the wall with silicon, thus chip developers have to really get serious about multi-core designs. The idea is simple, instead of doubling the clock speed you double the number of processing elements and you can do twice the computation. Of course, this is only theoretical. The problem is that when you have multiple cores then "someone" is responsible for keeping them busy; meaning that the code that is executing has to be compiled to do it, or the programmer has to do it manually. Multi-core programming has been around actually for years on the PC platform, it's just that most programmers didn't know it. The 486 even had two cores: a U and V pipeline that could each perform a computation if you ordered the instructions correctly - a crude form of multiprocessing. So more or less, instead of increasing clock speed by a factor of N, you increased the number of processors by a factor of N and distribute the work. There is no limit on this really, but the problem is distributing the work and then potentially re-assembling the results.

Q2. What does this mean to current programmers and those who will be entering the computer science profession?
A. Not much, as I mentioned multi-core programming has been around for a long time. Most programmers programming on a Power-PC, Pentium with multi-cores, hyper threading, and so forth, don't even know they are since the compiler and processors handle the problem for the most part. However, for performance programmers it means a lot. It means that if they manually take control of these machines they can get them to do quite a bit more than the compilers otherwise will be able to. Additionally, it will "help" programmers to know about multiprocessing to program. Nonetheless, realistically it won't matter. I can make a good analogy: The majority of web programmers don't know much at all about programming, data structures, algorithms, AI, compiler theory, yet they can "program". In other words, they are surrounded by so much supporting technology: "<HTML>Hello World</HTML>" causes about 1,000,000 lines of code to execute from the server, the browser, and finally the renderer. So I doubt that people will even know multi-core programming or need to learn it since the compilers will handle it. However, people will know that more is better, and more cores are better, so it will be more of a marketing indicator. But, for the hardcore performance enthusiasts, it will be a whole new opportunity.

Q3. Starting at the drawing board, how do programmers need to begin their design process differently in order to maximize the benefits?
A. First, "parallel programming" isn't for everything. New programmers to the concept tend to get carried away and the gains they make in parallel programming are lost by "re-assembly". Thus, the idea is to find processes in your program that are either: A. totally asynchronous and then run them each on a processor, or B. if you can find separable problems (graphics are a good example), then the question is, "in breaking the problem into parts, and solving a piece on each processor, can you then re-assemble the results faster than just doing the whole thing on a single processor?" That is, there is "overhead" in the separation and re-assembly of the solution, so you have to watch out. Additionally, if processes are going to talk to each other, or share resources, then synchronization becomes a big problem. For example, if processor A has to wait for B has to wait for C, then there is no parallelism, thus, you need to make sure that processes (on each processor) can run as independently as possible.

Q4. What potential headaches and consequences does this add to the already difficult process of software development?
A. Taking full advantage of parallelism is number one. It's relatively hard to just take a program and break it up into parallel tasks. Also, if a programmer does so, then instead of having a single processor running a single thread of execution now he has 2, 3, 10, 100 processors or more doing things, and the simple act of debugging things becomes much more complex as well as the tools needed. So I think that multiprocessor programming is going to have the same trouble it always has had: writing the code, getting it to work, debugging it. This will be remedied more and more with parallel compilers of course.

Q5. How critical is it to "balance" software threads, and how do you prevent some cores from sitting idle and wasting valuable hardware?
A. If you are talking about software threads running on a single processor, then not very critical. The operating system is going to schedule your threads anyway, so it's not going to waste that much since you can't hog the system. However, if we drill down to a single thread then the same goals apply to multiple threads; keep the thread busy, this means NO WAIT LOOPS, if you need to wait on something, then do some work that you know takes less time, do the work, then wait a little bit, rather than a lot. Simply keep the processor thread working.

Q6. How much further do you see multi-core technology taking us and what are its limitations?
A. I think that we are going to see a number of technologies all aggregate in the next 10 years. New (old actually) semiconductor materials that are faster will be used, potentially spintronic processor cores will start to be available, but certainly there will be more and more processors in each generation. But, like I alluded to, this is not new stuff. There have been many, many companies with multiprocessors and multi-cores out there. Graphics cards are the best example. They have been doing it for 15 years. So, I just think that our degree of freedom with clock speeds is starting to wane, thus multiple cores are going to just have to be there. Thus, I think that you will see 16-64 cores in next generation processors, then 64-256 and so forth, it will happen like clock speeds and data bus widths did.

Q7. What do you see as the next technological step beyond today’s multi-core on silicon?
A. Spintronics and quantum computing are the next frontiers without a doubt. Moving electrons around is brute force, but like internal combustion, it works, is easy to understand, everyone does it, but at some point things have to change. So I would say that in 8-12 years spintronic processors will start to come out, and in 10-15 the first commercial quantum processors that "do something" will start to hit the streets.

Q8. In 1965 Gordon Moore commented in an article in "Electronics Magazine" that processor complexity seemed to double about every 18 months. This seems to have been the benchmark that the chip industry has been chasing. Do you think that Moore’s Law has driven advancement, or do you think it has provided a psychological "speed limit" that may have stunted innovation?
A. I think Moore's law has nothing to do with advancement. I think that it's more or less obvious when you finish something how to make it 2x as fast or small, or more. It's just that to get everyone together and do it takes about a year or two, so it's really just a good insight into the "engineering process" and how long a revision takes place in the real world by a master engineer.

Q9. Artificial Intelligence seems to be the ultimate "brass ring" for computer scientists. Beginning with basic logic functions and ending with the replication of human consciousness, how far along this journey do you believe we currently are with our most sophisticated technology?
A. This is a hard question. We have the computing power, but so far just copying an ant is beyond our reach. I think the real problem is knowing how to approach this problem, and it's something I think about a lot. We just have to have a radical paradigm shift in AI to make some good ground. We are inching toward it right now, but computer scientists have to back up from the problem and look at it in a much more biological way, and model it more biologically both constructionally and programmatically. Then it might be a matter of building systems that can become sentient, and THEN understand how they work. For example, a 6502 with 256 bytes of memory can represent 256^256 programs. We have never explored all of them, nonetheless, we all have played with 6502's. Thus, self programming and learning are the keys to this; we need to build a system with the tools to learn and let it go from there, then try to understand the results. Time for this to happen... 20-30 years before we have any really good AIs that are general in their solution domain. But more and more we are going to see AIs applied to things like driving, etc.

Q10. The Turing Test – a test in which a computer can carry on a human-like conversation – seems to be the most widely accepted method to determine when we reach AI. Do you have your own idea for this type of test?
A. I think this test is as ridiculous as an IQ test. This is from half a century ago. I can have a conversation with half the teenagers in this country and I would think they are computers :) So, I think the Turing test is too domain specific. I think that a test for intelligence should be a battery of thousands of questions and problems you can ask any age group, and if the results are indistinguishable, then it's as good as it needs to be, but this has nothing to do with whether it's "alive" or sentient. This is a hard thing to put your finger on. Souls and religion aside if you believe or not. But, what is self-awareness? No one really knows. But, I know one thing, if we can copy it, we can understand it. And I guarantee that if you take a human being and replace every single neuron with a synthetic neuron, one by one, that person will still be that person. So consciousness, I believe, is just pure information. It's a pattern, not physical in nature.

Q11. What do you think is the ultimate purpose that computers can serve in our lives?
A. Truthfully....to replace us. Evolution and natural selection for the human race is at a standstill, so the only way for us to evolve really is for augmentation and re-design by ourselves. But, in the next 100 years, I think that computers will continue to be everywhere to perform work, and AI will help with jobs that no one wants, or that are too dangerous, or to create artificial friends, playmates, babysitters, pets, teachers, police, explorers, and so forth.

In addition to being the author of many books on computer and computer game programming, Andre LaMothe is CEO of Nurve Networks LLC. His company designs and manufactures do-it-yourself computer gaming consoles that are an excellent way to learn the important fundamentals of digital electronics and computer programming. They're also a lot of fun and allow you to play real video games that you design and write yourself. Nurve's latest console, the Hydra, employs a processor chip with multiple processing cores, and is a great way to gain skills in multi-core programming. Visit these sites to learn more:

XGameStation
HydraConsole
 

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