The Octopiler

How do you get the current and future generation of computer scientists, software engineers and programmers productive on parallel programming techniques? The octopiler. The "Octopiler seeks to arm Cell programmers" was the first announcement that I have seen for simplifying the development of complex parallel programs for the new Cell chip. (See my Jan 2006 blog entry about the Cell chip, "The Cell Processor and the Future").

The complexity of the new Cell chip and the need to be able to write programs that take advantage of it was always known to be programming challenge. In most computer science curriculums, you just don't teach the current generation of students how to write 8-way parallel algorithms. IBM has come up with a solution to create a compiler called the Octopiler that uses some artificial intelligence to breakdown your program algorithms and optimize them for the Cell chip's eight special-purpose engines (SPE).

What is most interesting about this new technology is that in theory it will make programming for a parallel processing chip as simple as writing single threaded programs. At least that is the goal. Whether this is realized or not in research and practice is to be seen.

I predicted that the Cell chip would change many things in computer science in the near future. This new compiler technology is the first tangible proof that I have seen to date. IBM says that the octopiler technology is available today in limited form on a 64-bit machine running Fedora Linux and a specialized version of the GCC compiler. The migration towards 64-bit computing just got another reason if you are interested in developing future applications for the Cell processor.

If you are in the game programming industry and want to develop games for the Sony Playstation 3, then you really do not have a choice but to start learning about the octopiler and other emerging technologies surrounding the Cell processor. I have never worked in the game programming domain so my viewpoint may be entirely wrong since there are already games under development for the Playstation 3 for the past year or so.

Anyway, the Cell chip will keep our industry dynamic and interesting for years to come.