The Second Industrial Revolution

While the first one is still in progress in parts of the world, the second is well underway. The first is measured by our physical capacity to multiply our productivity through machines and regimentation, the second is measured by our intellectual capacity to grow through free and constant access to information and learning. Personal creativity is on the rise. There is and will be a progressively compounding effect.

We need to pull down some of the old thinking too!

In an interview following the WWDC Keynote, Steve Jobs discussed Snow Leopard and the parallel-programming breakthrough that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was poised to make with Grand Central. Grand Central Terminal is the largest train station in the world. It is in New York. Grand Central is aptly named as the software is devised to coordinate the activity of multiple cores working of different problems simultaneously. Presumably, these chips will be designed by the former PASemi team. We discuss this in the last blog.

It is probably a mishmash, but trains and walls conjure up too much of the first industrial revolution to us. We are looking for more individual empowerment. It seems the proletariat of the processor has taken hold! The industry is being herded in this direction as single processors have been pushed to a flash point. Did we forget we could write better software?!

The MPC5121e could be considered a multi-core SoC with the AXE and MBX Lite packed in with the e300. We have learned that optimized tools are not for people that understand multicore programming. The key is to make the algorithm better and then to select the language that best translates it into a digital form the computer understands. It is an art and not what you'll develop through a pretty GUI. Likewise, programming with altivec is a special talent and draws us back to what we really want to write about today.

Last Friday, Konstantinos Margaritis gave a lecture on the subject at the University of Peiraeus. The presentations are here (.pdf) or here (.odp). Konstantinos has made more than a few presentations on altivec over the years (e.g., Debconf 5). He originally organized freevec after the altivec classes he attended at EuroSNDF in 2004 (please see last four rows). He has been busy and productive. It is great to see what a single person and a single processor can do.

Let's not forget about the capacity of the human mind to be inventive when it is free. And, please let's not forget about a single Power processor with altivec such as the MPC8610. There is much more human capital ready to invest!

The Community is the Computer - a Super Computer. Go Zig!

R&B