As the holiday weekend winds down, the list of the worlds 500 fastest supercomputers has once again been updated. Since 1993 the list has been updated twice a year, and the world has watched as nations and corporations compete to move ahead and stay ahead of the competition. Publicity occasionally accompanies a major technology leap; but normally the updates go by without much fanfare.
It has been more than a year since I wrote my first article about awesome computing power of the Sony PlayStation 3; and almost as long since it was released for sale. I’m more than happy to discover that I was not the only one to recognize the punch packed by this little gem. Gaming machines have pushed technological boundaries for years, but I don’t believe any have done so to the extent of the PS3.
An article was brought to my attention recently. It contains an interview with Bjarne Stroustrop, of C++ fame, discussing the language to which he gave life. Aside from a few technical non sequiturs, such as referring to C++ as “the archetypal ‘high level’ computer language (that is, one that preserves the features of natural, human language)”, I found the article rather entertaining.
When I originally titled this article, I had no idea just how appropriate it would turn out to be. Thanks to a series of events that has occurred over the past few weeks, this article has become a 3-time, self-referential do-over. Self-fulfilling prophecy, or simply an application of Murphy’s law?
A few months back, I picked up an issue of Scientific American. Nothing to unusual there, but I was quite surprised by one of the articles I found inside. In “Dependable Software by Design”, Daniel Jackson put the high-integrity software industry in the public eye.
