Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

Reflections on Tibet

In an earlier blog entry, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek essay about dual head crashes while in Tibet. I experienced altitude sickness and migraines. I also suffered a disk failure because the heads lacked enough air to fly above the platters. Both were minor annoyances during a wonderful visit to a region rich with history and natural beauty. Hence, I have been following the recent news about Tibet with great sadness and thought it appropriate to comment on my experiences.

Parallelism, Multicore and Academic Partnership

Today, Microsoft and Intel jointly announced the creation of two Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers (UPCRC): one at the University of California at Berkeley (UC-Berkeley) and a second at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The two university press releases (Illinois and UC-Berkeley) are also posted. As Tony Hey said during the announcement, "Driven by the unprecedented capability of multicore processors, we're in the midst of a revolution in the computing industry, which profoundly affects the way we develop software."

Computing is Beauty; Computing is Truth

In a recent invited essay for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), which appeared in the March 2008 issue of SIAM News, I wrote about the power of computing as an intellectual amplifier and the beauty of computing as an illuminator of truth. Elements of the essay were adapted from my July 2003 and May 2004 testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology on the status of high-performance computing.

Comic Book Heroes and Secret Identities

Microsoft and Seagate have recently launched a joint comic book series about IT professionals, called Heroes Happen Here (HHH). It is linked to a Microsoft product launch (Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008) and the associated marketing campaign. HHH will run through the end of June, and the writers are soliciting storyline ideas about IT challenges that can be incorporated into the strip. I have heard HHH described as Dilbert meets the Justice League, and it does have some of that self-depreciating superhero spirit. It's a fun read.