I am often asked what “Large Pages” in computer systems are good for. For commodity (x86_64) processors, “small pages” are 4KiB, while “large pages” are (typically) 2MiB. The size of the page controls how many bits are translated between virtual and physical addresses, and so represent a trade-off between what… read more
Performance
Is “ordered summation” a hard problem to speed up?
Sometimes things that seem incredibly difficult aren’t really that bad…. I have been reviewing technology challenges for “exascale” computing and ran across an interesting comment in the 2008 “Technology Challenges in Achieving Exascale Systems” report. In Section 5.8 “Application Assessments”, Figure 5.16 on page 82 places “Ordered Summation” in the… read more