[GAP] Ada to help with "Multi-Core Paradigm Shift"?

[John McCormick]

Dirk originally sent this note out to the Team-Ada mailing list.  As 
it deals with curricular issues I thought it appropriate to forward 
it to GAP members.

John

>Date:         Fri, 1 Sep 2006 11:21:24 +0200
>From:         Dirk Craeynest <Dirk.Craeynest at CS.KULEUVEN.AC.BE>
>Subject: Ada to help with "Multi-Core Paradigm Shift"?
>To:           TEAM-ADA at LISTSERV.ACM.ORG
>
>Hi Ada Teamers,
>
>I just stumbled upon the following:
>
>     "Intel to Prepare Students for Multi-Core Paradigm Shift"
>     <http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/785166.html>
>     (dated August 11, 2006)
>
>Although this comes from a High Performance Computing forum it is not
>about massive parallel systems but more about multi-threaded systems
>in general.
>
>Since quite some time, I'm seeing a growing awareness of the
>importance, but also the difficulty, of developing multi-threaded
>applications.  Unfortunately, the 25+ years of Ada experience in
>that domain seem to be globally ignored...
>
>Most often, and in this announcement as well, only "add-on" approaches
>(such as OpenMP) are mentioned but not those built-in in a language
>(such as Ada tasking and protected objects).  I quote:
>
>     "The curriculum provides an introduction to Intel multi-core
>     architecture and teaches computer science students how to achieve
>     maximum performance of their programs on threaded, multi-core and
>     multi-processor systems using Intel compilers and threading tools.
>     It also covers the importance of parallelism, threading concepts,
>     threading methodology and programming with threads (Windows,
>     OpenMP, PThreads).
>
>Even though some argue that low-level thread programming is not the way
>to go to develop multi-core applications, they all seem to think only
>about adding more powerful threading libraries to existing languages.
>
>Can we do anything to make Ada more visible in that domain?
>
>Should we respond to those papers, announcements, etc, suggesting
>to also look at Ada with its long track record of successful
>multi-threaded applications?
>
>Any volunteers, who have a "good pen" to write eloquent, brief,
>and to the point reactions?
>
>Dirk
>Dirk.Craeynest at cs.kuleuven.be (for Ada-Belgium/-Europe/SIGAda/WG9 mail)
> >>> Looking for Ada-related jobs, reachable from Leuven, Belgium <<<
>
>*** 12th Intl.Conf.on Reliable Software Technologies - Ada-Europe'2007
>*** June 25-29, 2007 * Geneva, Switzerland * http://www.ada-europe.org