Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Looking at the past, it is easy to see a trend. Smaller sizes and higher speeds are get-
ting exponentially more difficult for companies like IBM to achieve on new processor
designs. It seems the most cost-effective solution for consumers is to simply give the
box more CPUs, albeit extremely capable ones. The ITRS, or International Technol-
ogy Roadmap for Semiconductors, predicts that by 2020 we could see CPUs with
1,000 cores. The truth is that programmers who haven
t played in the somewhat
frightening but challenging multiprogramming arena are going to be left behind. It
takes an order of magnitude of more planning and sincere care and dedication to
avoid seriously difficult bugs in this kind of environment.
At some point, we can all hope that compilers will become smart enough or will
develop languages specifically for the purpose of handling tricky multiprogramming
problems. There have been attempts, such as Modula and concurrent Pascal, but
nothing so far seems to be winning out over us monkeys smashing our femur bones
on the monolith of C++. C# is certainly a rising star in my opinion, but even it
doesn
'
t seem to have any syntax or structures to make multiprogramming a brain-
dead proposition. Perhaps in a future release of NET, we
'
ll see something.
Perhaps a reader of this topic will think about that problem and realize we don
'
'
t need
new techniques, but simply a new language to describe new techniques.
Either way, multiprogramming is in your future whether you like it or not. So go,
play carefully, and learn.
Modern Operating Systems, Andrew Tannenbaum
