Tech chat: transform serial coded software into multi-threaded apps

Only a few minutes before his tech session during Microsoft Tech-Ed EMEA 2008 Edmund Preiss from the Intel Software & Services Group faced up to our three challenging questions:

1. What is your tech session all about?

2. Which tools help to multi-thread serial code?

3. How does Intel Parallel Studio help Windows developers?

So, his answer to question number one is simple and surprising at the same time: turning a serial programmed piece of software into a powerful multi-threaded, multi-core enabled application is quite easily, if you use the right tools, which he will talk about during his presentation.

One of the software tools for developers he will strive is the Intel Thread Checker, which is able to identify data races. In a worst case scenario these can lead to blue screens. Edmund will show the use of a second tool as well, the Intel Thread Profiler, which identifies annoying synchronization overhead in multi-threaded program codes.

Another aspect regarding parallel programmed applications is the false sharing which has to do with the L2 cache and can cause extended computing time. In these cases the VTune Performance Analyzer helps software developers to find the piece of source code which causes the false sharing problem.

Edmund found an interesting comparison for answer number two: In the past of programming people started to turn from assembler to high-level programming languages like Fortran or C Intel now offers a similar approach when you want to transfer single threaded to multi-threaded code: using programming models on a higher abstract level.

A good example for this are the Intel Threading Building Blocks which help software developers to parallelize their source code by transforming tasks into threads, which in turn can be handled properly by the integrated Scheduler.

And about the third question we have already talked about several times already, right?!

So, click the start button and watch the video interview with Edmund Preiss!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Intel
• Tech-Ed
• Microsoft
• multi-core
• VTune
• Core
• i7

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im on cam and bored

I NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO Wu