VSIPL Design Thoughts

As an implementer of the VSIPL API, I've thought of several small criticisms of the library. By posting them here, Google will record them for posterity.

* VSIPL Core Lite should require implementations to include vsip_complete() -
This could easily be a no-op on any implementation that doesn't perform some sort of lazy evaluation. Applications could call it without fear that things may break if they move to another implementation.

* VSIPL API should include vsip_usermalloc() -
This would allocate user-accessible data blocks in a manner that could be used efficiently by the library. The alternative is let the user perform its own memory allocation; this has no regard to alignment or pinned paging.

* VSIPL should include more robust error reporting methods -
Reports might be implementation-dependent, but it would enable much better robust composition.

I am confident none of these requirements would break existing implementations or negatively impact users.

Inexpensive Performance

Taking a break from MemoryTraceGenerator.cpp to mention:

I'm replacing the motherboard and CPU in my dad's home desktop with an Athlon 64 x2 Kuma at 2.7 GHz and an $80 EVGA motherboard with a GeForce 8200 integrated video chipset. The total here is roughly $200 if you also purchase several GB of DDR2 RAM. This wouldn't be a terrible CUDA development platform, particularly if someone loaned you a higher-end GPU. Even without, its integrated GPU is still capable of accelerating typical applications such as video decoding.

I only mention this because what one might consider today's low-end desktop is astonishingly powerful.

It's also my first time touching AMD.

Winds

Design fail: high winds bristling down Peachtree St at the 130 ft level tend to pass over and around
the balcony railings of our condo creating quite a bit of commotion. I would estimate the power spectrum has peaks at the 10 kHz frequency as well as the 5 Hz and ~100 Hz frequencies. The noise was so loud and so stationary that, at Emma's suggestion, I slept wearing ear plugs from my shooting kit. That worked for roughly two hours.

Can't we just remove the railings from the balcony during high winds?

Webcam

Emma's webcam is now operational. I am using webcamXP 5 [free!] to make HTTP POST calls to upload images. At present, the server will store only the most recent image, so don't expect a log. It is updated once every hour. I may enable serving the most recent 24 hours, but that functionality will not come online today.

I used a PHP script on the server to receive the files and authenticate the poster. If you guessed the passphrase and spoofed our IP address, I guess you could upload an image of a giant eyeball and it would appear on our webcam page.

Here it is. Bookmark this:

webcam

Note the billboard between the Viewpoint and the T-Mobile sales office. The nude male ad has been replaced for an ad for The Mighty Boosh on Adult Swim.

GPU VSIPL Press

GPU VSIPL is now featured on NVIDIA's CUDA Zone: GPU VSIPL. NVIDIA lists it as an application, although we only wrote the application to demonstrate the library (and achieved a 75x speedup over the world-famous TASP VSIPL distribution).

In unrelated news, Emma and I have completed our move. I need to set up her webcam.

GPGPU'09

The presentation at GPGPU'09 went well yesterday. I lasted several minutes over budget [as usual], but I felt good about it. When I get home and find my credentials to the GPU VSIPL website, I'll upload my presentation and cite my paper.

Today was the first day of ASPLOS. I wound up sleeping in and missed the keynote, but I sat at the keynote speaker's table during lunch. He's a Google guy and regaled the group with clever ideas, charm, and wit.

The trouble with conferences is they fill you with a billion great ideas and no time to implement them. The wild and crazy idea session included:

* bubble wrap cores - disposable CPU cores so you can run several hotter and faster and burn them out quickly
* on-chip power - nuclear or piezoelectric
* neuro-implants - CPUs in your brain
* purely speculative cores - run parts of your program long before you ever get to them

2 of 3 beer vouchers remain.

$QR$ Presentation

I finally finished my GPGPU '09 presentation. I need to script it and make sure I can present all 45 slides in 20 minutes. Some of them are closer to animations than "view graphs" so the actual number of slides I'd spend more than a few sentences on is lower.

How do you guys prepare for presentations?

Word-for-word scripting, bullet points you remember to mention in the context of a larger discussion you have with your audience, mix Adderall and a vodka tonic shortly before the presentation and hope for the best? Comment!