Alexandre Trilla, PhD - Research Engineer |

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-- Thoughts on data analysis, software development and innovation management. Comments are welcome

Advances in parallel frameworks

05-Feb-2009

Some days ago Xavier Llora published a technical report about a pilot study (available here) of a data-intensive framework running genetic algorithms using Meandre. What's most impressive is the capacity of Meandre to parallelize the computation bottlenecks dividing the load among the cores of the processor that runs the framework.

I am quite concerned with frameworks as I believe that a good one is a key of success in such complex fields of study. Since I discovered the framework that Sphinx-4 uses, which I mentioned in a previous post, I realized of the importance of this concept, and Meandre seems to be an excellent improvement. Taking profit from the parallelization aspect (linearly scalable), the GUI-based design, the script-based design and the requisite that the modules must be implemented either in Java, Python or Lisp, Meandre raises the flexibility of semi-interpreted programming languages to an extent worth mentioning. I am looking forward to using it as part of my present learning stage in my pursuit for the Ph.D. degree.

And I wonder, what would happen if the dream of a Java Real Machine (JRM) came true someday? How would Meandre perform on a Java bytecode-based processor? By now, as far as I'm concerned the Java Optimized Processor (JOP), a Java processor architecture for embedded real-time systems implemented on a FPGA, is leading the open source development of this dream. So wake up (don't dream anymore)...