Multi-core Momentum

We've been looking at the new Intel Core i7 processors today. Obviously, with the Nehalem architecture Intel are really getting ready for massively multi-threaded multi-core chips in the near future. This is good news for image processing as a great many useful algorithms can be implemented using a parallel architecture, so the more mainstream parallel computing gets, the better. At Vision4ce , we've had a lot of success accelerating algorithms using the GPU and NVidia CUDA, so that experience should help us deploy onto other multi-core architectures, probably using OpenCL.

Another bit from Intel's blurb that interests me is the QuickPath technology:

'Intel QuickPath technology is a point-to-point connection—there is no single bus that all the processors must use and contend with to reach memory and I/O. This improves scalability and eliminates the competition between processors for bus bandwidth.'.

Now that sounds like Intel is really laying good groundwork for connecting lots of cores together in a parallel architecture - lets see what happens with the Intel Nehalem architecture in the near future.

Vcd on XP

Here is a useful little utility from MS for XP that allows you to mount ISO cd's without having to have some huge software bundle installed. Its old, but at 60kb its still useful.

Download XP Virtual Control Panel

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe


Installation instructions
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1. Copy VCdRom.sys to your %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder.
2. Execute VCdControlTool.exe
3. Click “Driver control”
4. If the “Install Driver” button is available, click it. Navigate to the %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder, select VCdRom.sys, and click Open.
5. Click “Start”
6. Click OK
7. Click “Add Drive” to add a drive to the drive list. Ensure that the drive added is not a local drive. If it is, continue to click “Add Drive” until an unused drive letter is available.
8. Select an unused drive letter from the drive list and click “Mount”.
9. Navigate to the image file, select it, and click “OK”. UNC naming conventions should not be used, however mapped network drives should be OK.