ParaSail: Parallel Specification and Implementation Language

Check out the Designing ParaSail, A New Programming Language blog for upcoming ParaSail talks in Edinburgh and Portland.

What is ParaSail, and why should you care?

The number of cores in our processors proliferate, but individual programs continue to do a poor job at parallel processing. Sure, your OS can run your email client on one core and your image editing on another. But how about running that image editor's compression algorithm on a batch of 17 files efficiently, spread across your four, six or more cores? That's a job for the application, or just perhaps, the compiler.

ParaSail is a new, concise programming language that by its design makes it intuitive for developer to write programs that can be efficiently processed in parallel and, at the same time, be inherently safe and secure. In fact the language's constructs hinder writing in declarative style. Principal designer S. Tucker Taft claims that the programmer has to work harder to force sequential evaluation.

As multi-core processors proliferate, languages such as ParaSail will help applications take advantage of increased throughput by easily and reliably executing in parallel at the thread, not application, level.

JDM

eWeek: Enterprise Mobility: RIM BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Spied at Gartner Conference

Nicholas Kolakowski shares on eWeek, reveals a RIM Playbook on display at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2010. Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2010, with a

7-inch screen, front- and rear-facing cameras (presumably for video conferencing) and a slim form-factor. RIM claims a PlayBook screen resolution of 1,024 by 600...

Compare to: Samsung Tab, Apple iPad. Think: Flash, QNX RTOS, open. Wait for: release date.

Q: PlayBook: for enterprise, or play?

Photo source: msn.com

CNN: AT&T: The most hated company in iPhone land

David Goldman compares the perception and the reality behind AT&T's network woes ("fastest 3G network") and Verizon's marketing field day ("more 3G coverage"). Network strain at AT&T may be contributed to the success of the iPhone; would Verizon have fared better?

"For Verizon ... we still wonder if the network has the capacity and backhaul to support a device with an adoption curve of the iPhone," said Piper Jaffray analyst Chris Larsen in a client note.

Q: How reliable is your network?