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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Koligman who wrote (142334)	8/28/2001 9:24:58 PM
From: Saturn V	Respond to of 186894

Ref < I'll tip my hat to whatever group of smart folks can do that!! The problems I used to work on were so esoteric that I just can't see how testing will ever find some of them, but progress can always be made > I agree that testing will not work, since it is impossible to go thru all the possible relative timing between the two threads. A lot of problems appear on new platforms, or with subtle hardware changes. However a software tool can analyze multi threaded code for design weaknesses. For example for standard software, tools exist which can alert the programmer to hazards like uninitialized variables, uninitialized pointers, or memory not returned to the OS on exit, etc. Some experienced programmers can develop an AI tool to analyze the code, and identify weaknesses. This could then become a part of software QA. I hope that something along these lines happens soon, since the hardware technology trends make multiple threading a cheap and dirty way to boost performance, and so software developers will develop it to boost performance. Since reliability always gets ignored, a la Microsoft, the implications will be deadly for the industry. Maybe intel Architecture Labs will step up to the plate and do the needful.