Caught the Multi-Core Train

This morning I received an email from Intel’s University Relations department. The hard work from the end of last year finally paid off. I got Intel’s support to promote multi-core technology teaching at the university and was authorized to access some technical materials.

Thank you for your support of our work and for submitting a course project proposal to the “Intel Multi-Core Technology University Course Program.” After multiple rounds of discussion by our internal expert panel, we now have a conclusion. We are very happy to inform you that your project proposal has been approved and will be successfully added to the “Intel Multi-Core Technology University Course Program”!

As part of this program, Intel will provide your university/college with some hardware and software donations and training support (including 2 multi-core servers, 1 dual-core laptop, corresponding technical training and academic conference invitations, possibly including classroom licenses for a certain number of Intel software development tools, and additional related software/hardware purchase discounts), and will send your school an “[University Name] - Intel Multi-Core Technology Laboratory” plaque, to help your school offer quality multi-core technology courses by September this year. We will also contact you by phone to discuss and sign the donation agreement.

Congratulations once again, and we hope for continued successful cooperation with your university to jointly cultivate outstanding talent.

For multi-core technology, the coming period will certainly be the direction of desktop computing. The hardware stage is set — how will the software play its part? Different companies and individuals all have different views. My feeling is that even Intel itself doesn’t know which direction to go. The last teacher training, though nominally about multi-core, was all reheated content — multithreaded programming, OpenMP, etc. Nothing revolutionary. This is undeniably a huge opportunity.

Finally, I wonder if that laptop will be for me to use, hehe. Vista, oh Vista, I want to install Vista.