It was about the paradigm shift that the chip industry is undergoing - the trend towards more cores, rather than higher gigahertz horsepower. However, if you are an average Joe developer like me, you probably program your applications without leveraging the power of two or more cores simultaneously. By default, we don’t ‘think parallel’ for various reasons. For one, threading is not an easy concept. The seminar looked at some of Intel’s software offerings that help developers (especially Visual Studio developers) to create, debug and optimize threaded/multicore applications. (However, this post will not focus on those tools - you may want to visit www.intel.com/go/parallel for more information).

On a related thread (pun intended!), gcc-4.4.0 was released recently. This added support for version 3.0 of the OpenMP specification. OpenMP is something I had heard of before, but never actually tried. It is an API for C, C++ and Fortran programmers that enables you to ‘parallel program’ easily. Jargonspeak calls it ‘platform independent shared memory multiprocessing’. In effect, it’s threads without the associated headache of thread management. By the way, gcc has supported OpenMP way back from version 4.2. So, you don’t need the latest bleeding edge version for this. However, should you want to, on Windows you can always download the excellent TDM MingW builds for gcc-4.4.0 (latest direct link). If you’re a Linux geek, you probably know how to get gcc-4.4 for your distro anyway. Also, Microsoft Visual C++ Express does not include/support OpenMP - hence my experiments are limited to gcc on both Win and Lin.

All right then, let’s see how OpenMP aids a classic case of parallelization: matrix multiplication. Agreed - this is a rather simple programming problem, and real world problems are usually harder to parallelize than this. However, this should serve as a good starting point to explore further.

So, here’s the basic matrix multiplication loop that we want to parallelize, assuming arr1 and arr2 are inputs, and arr3 is the output array:

for(i=0; i<n; ++i) {
  for(j=0; j<n; ++j) {
    temp = 0;
    for(k=0; k<n; ++k) {
      temp += arr1[i][k] * arr2[k][j];
    }
    arr3[i][j] = temp;
  }
}

OpenMP is mostly a set of compiler directives (pragmas) and library routines. In this case, it’s enough for us to add on single statement before our loop.

#pragma omp parallel for private(i, j, k, temp)
for(i=0; i<n; ++i) {
  for(j=0; j<n; ++j) {
    temp = 0;
    for(k=0; k<n; ++k) {
      temp += arr1[i][k] * arr2[k][j];
    }
    arr3[i][j] = temp;
  }
}

That’s it! This pragma tells the OpenMP subsystem to do it’s little magic behind the scenes and parallelize the ‘for loop’ following it.

Here’s the complete program, which contains additional code to initialize the arrays arr1 and arr2 pseudo-randomly, and to calculate the timings taken by the normal and the parallelized versions. You can compile the program with gcc-4.4 by the simple command:

gcc -fopenmp matmul.c

And on Windows, you might need to edit the PATH variable to include the GNU libgomp runtime (libgomp-1.dll). (Libgomp is GNU’s implementation of OpenMP). Here’s how I did it, for example:

set PATH=D:\MinGW\lib\gcc\mingw32\bin;%PATH%

So, the end result? Here are 4 sets of execution outputs. Two from Windows (TDM gcc-4.4.0):

Enter dimension ('N' for 'NxN' matrix) (100-2000): 1000
Populating array with random values...
Completed array init.
Crunching without OMP... took 23.032000 seconds.
Crunching with OMP... took 13.000000 seconds.
 
Enter dimension ('N' for 'NxN' matrix) (100-2000): 2000
Populating array with random values...
Completed array init.
Crunching without OMP... took 216.140000 seconds.
Crunching with OMP... took 118.641000 seconds.

And two from Linux (Ubuntu 9.04, gcc-4.3.3):

Enter dimension ('N' for 'NxN' matrix) (100-2000): 1000
Populating array with random values...
Completed array init.
Crunching without OMP... took 21.623144 seconds.
Crunching with OMP... took 13.686926 seconds.
 
Enter dimension ('N' for 'NxN' matrix) (100-2000): 2000
Populating array with random values...
Completed array init.
Crunching without OMP... took 189.184673 seconds.
Crunching with OMP... took 104.220751 seconds.

That’s almost doubling the speed, while adding one statement to your program! Actually two statements, if you include the include directive for <omp.h>. I’m sure you’d agree that for this case, OpenMP provides a really easy way of utilizing the idle core of most desktop machines out there. The good part is, even on a single core machine, the code works the way it should (the pragmas essentially NOP out, since there’d be no benefit in parallelizing on one core).

A look at the CPU utilization proves to be interesting too. (By the way, my home system runs an AMD Althon64 X2 4600 dual core, at a clock speed of 2.4GHz). In the first case, here’s a snap of the system information (using the excellent Process Explorer). Notice how the CPU usage remains peaked at around 50%, and the second CPU is mostly idle. Please click on the images below for the full view.

And here’s the usage when the OpenMP crunching is in action:

That’s more like it. Both horses in action, CPU peaked at 100%. Similar stuff can be seen on Linux, using Ubuntu’s (rather, GNOME’s) inbuilt System Monitor:

The portion where the red and orange worms collide at the top is the duration of the OpenMP version of the matrix multiplication program.

As already stated, matrix multiplication is an ideal case - and such 2x speedup on dual core machines are possible with only such ideal problems. However, there often are, if you look closely enough, parts of your program that can be parallelized. Further, we have not even scratched the surface of what’s possible using OpenMP 3.0. It goes way beyond parallelizing simple for loops. (Here’s the link to the spec in PDF).

And for sure, OpenMP is not the only way to go parallel portably. If you work in C++, you would have heard of the Boost C++ libraries. Give boost::threads a go!

With Intel gearing up for the release of its eight core Nehalem EX processors, and with AMD’s six core Istanbul processor already finding its way into mainstream desktop boards, there remains only one thing to say: if there is a time to think in parallel, this is it!

~Raj

1. I’m assuming you have MSVC 2008 Express already installed. If not, download the offline install ISO from here, mount it (using Daemon Tools for example), and launch the installer from the virtual drive.  Next, download the Windows open source version of Qt from here.

2. Now, you can either extract the Qt source package to a folder where you want it to be installed, or you might want to extract it to a temporary location, and install only the final files to your install directory. Doing the latter of course makes more sense. Except that it is NOT recommended for Windows. I have faced quite a few problems (which I will detail further down the line). Bottom line is - if you have no problems sparing about 1G for Qt, then choose the former approach.

Open up the “Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt” (available in the “Tools” sub-menu in your Visual C++ start menu entry). For the former approach, issue the following command:

configure

If you want a separate install directory (let’s say in D:\Qt-4.4.3), use the ‘prefix’ flag in this manner:

configure -prefix "D:\Qt-4.4.3"

3. Depending on your system, this takes a quite a while. Oh, and if you face an error like this, fear not:

copy qmake.exe P:\qt-win-opensource-src-4.4.3\bin\qmake.exe
        1 file(s) copied.
Creating makefiles in src...
Generating Visual Studio project files...
Could not find mkspecs for your QMAKESPEC(win32-msvc2008)
after trying:
        D:\Qt-4.4.3\mkspecs
Error processing project file:
P:/qt-win-opensource-src-4.4.3/projects.pro
Qmake failed, return code 3

This is the first of a few problems that crop up when you use a custom install location (i.e. the latter approach). Just copy the “mkspecs” folder from your source directory tree over to your install directory and re-run the configure program.

4. Once ‘configure’ completes, run ‘nmake’. This takes a really long time. If you chose to have a separate install location, run ‘nmake install’ once this completes.

5. Another problem of a separate install directory is that the Makefile forgets to copy the MANIFEST files. So, if at this stage you try to start “designer.exe” from your install/bin folder, you may get an error saying that the application failed to start because MSVCP90.dll was not found.

To fix this, copy over all the “.manifest” files from your source “bin” and “lib” directories over to the install folder’s “bin” and “lib” directories. At this point, you should be able to run Qt-Designer, Qt-Assistant etc from your bin directory.

6. Let us set up a couple of environment variables that make life easier for us. To edit environment variables, you need to right click “My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Environment Variables”. Add a new variable QTDIR pointing to your Qt install directory, and edit your PATH to include Qt’s “bin” directory as follows:

7. Now let’s try to get Qt’s “Hello World” tutorial program running from the command line. Fire up the Visual Studio Command Prompt, and create a file “Hello.cpp” containing the following code in a new directory called “hello”:

#include "QApplication"
#include "QPushButton"
 
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication app(argc, argv);
    QPushButton hello("Hello world");
    hello.resize(100, 30);
 
    hello.show();
    return app.exec();
}

Now, type the following commands in this new folder:

qmake -project
qmake hello.pro
nmake

This should create an executable “hello.exe”, which you should be able to execute to see your first GUI program using Qt-4.4 and MSVC 2008.

7. I would suggest working from the command prompt, but should you wish to use the Visual Studio Express IDE, here’s what you should do.

Fire it up, and go to “Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > VC++ Directories”. Add “$(QTDIR)\include” to the “Include files”, and “$(QTDIR)\lib” to the “Library files” drop-down lists respectively.

8. Create a new project (”File > New > Project > General > Makefile Project”) named “HelloQt”.

Go to “Project > Properties > Configuration Properties > Nmake” and enter the following in the build command line “qmake -project && qmake && nmake release-all”. Also enter “release\HelloQt.exe” in the “Output” field. (You may enter corresponding debug versions here as well).

Right click “Source Files” in the “Solution Explorer” and create a new file “HelloQt.cpp”. Copy paste the above program into it.

Run your program using “Ctrl+F5″. You should see this:

So there you have it. A crash HOWTO on developing Qt-4.4 programs using Visual Studio 2008 express. Feel free do comment on any problems you may have faced.

~Raj

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

- Tennyson (”Ring Out, Wild Bells”)

May 2009 be the year that you and I have been waiting for. And the year that ushers in peace in India and the world. And the year of the Linux desktop!

Cheers to a new beginning. Sweets on your desk, true Bong style

PS: Did you spot the typo in the box above?

~Raj

If you are a professional working in a city like Hyderabad (or Bangalore for that matter), you would be well aware of the fact that shifting your apartment is an infinitely unpleasant experience. Be that as it may, I had it the silver lining of “it’s all going to be over soon” in mind when I started house-hunting.

Except that, things had turned infinitely worse, compared to the last time I had to shift (which was four years ago). Real-estate brokers, for example, had taken professionalism to a whole new level. This is about one such particularly clever broker.

After what must have been six weeks of meeting brokers of all shapes and sizes and visiting numerous crappy overpriced apartments, I received a call from a certain Mr. Khan from MagicBricks.com. I had registered myself at this portal, which claims to be “India’s No. 1 Property Site”. I had also given my contact information along with my criteria of apartments I wanted for rent. So, when Mr. Khan explained to me, in impeccable English, that he had at least six apartments within my budget and in the localities I was looking for, I was delighted. He also explained that should I end up not liking any of those, he would continue to present apartments as an when they become available, until I was satisfied enough. Finally, a true professional in an industry chock-a-block with cheats wanting to make a quick buck!

I promptly set up a meeting with one of Mr. Khan’s agents on the very next day. Agent Aryan and Agent Unnamed arrived on a motorbike about a half-an-hour behind schedule (which is acceptable by Indian standards, right?). One look at Agent Aryan, and you could tell that this was no ordinary real-estate broker. Clad in Levi’s and donning long rock star like hair, this dude had panache written all over him. Like his boss Mr. Khan, his English was fluent and flawless.

Then the first major gotcha dawned: Agent Aryan explained that his ‘organization’ requires an up-front registration charge of 500 bucks (before any apartment is shown to me). I argued that Mr. Khan had conveniently missed this point on the phone. He said that it was probably a mistake, and tried to call up Mr. Khan. But, again, conveniently, he turned out to be unavailable. I decided to take the plunge: 500 bucks for ’showing unlimited apartments until I was satisfied’ seemed reasonable at that point.

With ‘registration’ formalities out of the way, we proceeded to the first apartment on his list. Alas, it turned out that the owner of this apartment was not in town, and had not left the keys with the guard on duty. Fear not, we have five in queue. The next one was apparently already let out, and we had missed it by a day. Fear not, four in queue. The next one actually was a sprawling 3BHK apartment at a superb location. It was still under construction, but it did look like it would be over soon. But wait, wouldn’t this be way beyond my budget? Gotcha number two: upon asking Agent Aryan, he smooth-talked me into believing that his job was limited to showing the apartments. His boss would later call me and quote the rents of all the properties I’ve liked.

The remaining two apartments they showed were of a similar kind - looked like decent apartments, but would definitely be beyond my budget, considering prevailing rents in such localities. It was then that the third major gotcha dawned upon me: none of the apartments shown had much likelihood of ultimately getting through.

However, Agent Aryan promised me that the next day he would again call me and show me some more that were about to be vacated. Realizing that this was turning out to be like any other apartment chase, I returned home dejected and disillusioned.

It was then that the fourth and final gotcha dealt the death blow: I came upon this review of MagicBricks. Fearing the worst, I tried calling up both Mr. Khan and Aryan. Not once, not twice - at least a dozen times. And my call was ignored every single time, every single day, from that day onwards.

Moral of the story: Never trust brokers who charge you a large amount up-front. For websites with property listings, only consider ones which are posted by actual owners.

I admit - I’ve been rather stupid and allowed myself to be hoodwinked. Nevertheless, the sheer suave manner in which I’ve been cheated still continues to impress me. All in all - a ‘dear diary moment’, don’t you think?

~Raj

As you can see here, it’s obscenely expensive, at almost 5k INR, and not something lesser mortals such as I would consider buying otherwise. Perhaps what Russel Peters says about Indians here is true, after all

(Poor) jokes apart, unboxing the package reveals a manual, a warranty-card, two extra sets of plugs (for abnormally small and abnormally large ears) and a leather carrying case, apart from the headphones. The medium sized plugs come mounted on the headphones. People seem to have complaints that these plugs keep falling off, but that hasn’t happened with me.

The earphones by themselves are the ‘in-ear’ type, meaning that they go quite a bit inside your ear-canal. At this point, I should probably mention that I’m no hardcore audiophile. Though this is my first set of in-ear headphones, I find that they fit in quite nicely, albeit a tad loose perhaps.

I plugged these babies into my PC, and set the mode to “headphone” on the Realtek HD Sound Manager (an app bundled with my motherboard). On my PC, I personally find that the best sound is produced by VLC media player (in “Rock” equalizer mode) for mp3 files.

The first thing I noticed about the sound was the humongous bass reproduction. I’ve never experienced such bass from such small earphones, for sure. The highs were also very crisp, but not tinny. After about a month of testing, this is what I would have to say, in summary:

Pros:

• Awesome bass reproduction, very good mids and highs
• Comfortable even after long hours of use
• Good looks, good build quality

Cons:

• Extremely expensive
• No noise cancellation, ineffective noise isolation

Overall, a very good pair of headphones. However, the price is way too much. And for that very reason, you tend to be very cautious - being extremely careful not to tug it by mistake, for example. So the bottomline is, if you have tons of money, go for it! If that’s the case, you may also want to take a look at the Bose Quiet Comfort range of headphones, which are said to offer the best noise-cancellation in the market today.

~Raj

A few extra letters after your name never hurts !

For the uninitiated, Birla Institute of Technology and Science offers distance learning courses in various streams.  The M.S. in Software Systems is a two year “work integrated” learning program, which essentially means that this is designed for people who wish to pursue the course while working full time at an organization. You need to have some work-ex to apply. It’s a regular 4-semester 2-year programme with a mix of open-book and closed-book exams. And, you should have a “mentor” - preferably your manager in your organization who guides you through it.

For more information, point your browser to the BITS DLPD website.

~Raj

Rock On is a story about four friends whose lives have made them sacrifice the one thing that they are passionate about most, the one thing that unites them all - their love for music. The story revolves around how their band “Magik” breaks up, how life changes after college, and how they nevertheless get to be reunited in a hell-freezes-over concert for one last time.

The cinematography of Rock On is top notch. But what really impressed me is the music of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Javed Akhtar. The songs are as good as you get in Hindi Rock.

The story reminded me of both Dil Chahta Hai and Jhankaar Beats. I would probably rate this as a 7.5/10. I liked this effort by Farhan Akhtar, but I don’t quite think it was as ‘magical’ as his first.

Another film that has satisfied established critics is A Wednesday. This revolves around the far more serious theme of terrorism. This film narrates an eventful day in the life of the Mumbai Commissioner of Police, Prakash Rathod.

It is for Anupam Kher’s and especially Naseeruddin Shah’s brilliant performances that one should see this film. While there were several obvious flaws, the storyline does not fail to thrill. Overall, this is again a 7/10 movie which I would recommend you to watch.

While none of these 2008 blockbuster Bollywood movies impressed me as much as the 1972 Hollywood movie, The Godfather, or the 2008 animated movie, Wall-E, I do believe things are looking very positive for the future of Bollywood. No longer must Bollywood flicks have people dancing around trees, or for that matter, item numbers to drive viewership.

Heck, they don’t even have to be more than 2 hours long!

~Raj

It was my good friend Rahul, who suggested Wall-E when I was cribbing about the truly awful flicks produced by Bollywood (Singh-Is-Kinng for example) that nevertheless turn out to be blockbusters. He also suggested that I should watch this movie with a special-someone. Realizing that this movie would not last in the theatres of Hyderabad if I decided to wait for that special-someone to watch this with, I opted to watch this with a friend, at IMAX.

I love Pixar. Finding Nemo was one of the best animated movies I’ve seen. I found Ratatouille nice, if not brilliant. My expectations from Wall-E were, admittedly, somewhat high right from the start. Andrew Stanton’s last masterpiece, Finding Nemo, had won the Oscar for the Best Animated Feature Film of 2004.

Boy, was I not disappointed! For, not only is Wall-E one of the best Pixar productions ever (if not the best), not only is Wall-E one of the best animation movies ever (if not the best), but Wall-E is also truly one of the best movies of all time!

Now that’s a tall claim to make for any animation film! I normally use such superlatives for movies such as The Shawshank Redemption, or The Godfather Part 1.

Being a geek at heart, I do love brilliant use of computer generated imagery. However, too often, CGI is overdone. Everything looks perfect on screen, but you don’t feel a thing inside. A good example of this would be Beowulf.

Pixar has enough creative genius to weave in that elusive element called magic in their films. Wall-E is an example of a movie where they have demonstrated that they have tuned this art to perfection.

Without trying to spoil the movie for you if you have not watched it yet (and watch it you must), the movie is about a robot named Wall-E - who is the only creature left on planet Earth. Humans have had to evacuate many hundreds of years earlier since they had polluted Mother Earth beyond repair. While humans live an almost completely materialistic life on a spaceship light years away, all that Wall-E wants is a companion on Earth. His journey starts when a female robot EVE lands on planet Earth and makes an indelible impact on his heart.

I was expecting a cute Ratatouille-ish story from Pixar. But Wall-E is not just-another-Disney-film-for-kids. In fact, as my friend pointed out after the movie, there are several subtle nuances, deep issues and sweeping messages in the film. I’ve never seen computer generated robots portray emotions without words so well - they can easily put many Bollywood actors to shame . On the other hand, there is also this wonderfully charming yet unlikely love between the two robots. And all this is provided in a package so adorable that you cannot help but fall in love with Wall-E.

And if you were wondering if Pixar’s animation was up to the mark in this movie, hell yes, it is. The world, as portrayed, is covered in piles of metals, scrap and consumer waste - yet it looks jaw-dropping drop-dead gorgeous!

Let’s not even talk about the wit and humour throughout the film. You’ve got to see it for yourself. This is indeed a film that transcends generations, and will be appreciated by people of all ages - but for different reasons perhaps.

Overall Wall-E is a magnificient masterpiece. It’s going to take a lot of work if some other animation film wants to be considered for the Academy Award for the Best Animation Film of 2008! If you want a truly heart-warming experience, then don’t miss it!

Pixar - you guys are Gods! Keep up the stellar work!

~Raj

My PC was already a venerable powerhouse. Equipped with an AMD Sempron 2200+ (1.5GHz) processor, 512MB of RAM, and a GeForce 400MX IGP, it had the muscle to play all 3D FPS games of… well, the year 2003 at best

The reason behind this upgrade was to spend less of my extremely valuable time twiddling my thumbs and waiting for Firefox to start, or a Half-Life 2 episode to load.

So I headed off to Chenoy Trade Centre at Secunderabad, to an affable guy named Gaffar at a store called ‘Computer Bazaar’. Incidentally, this is also where I had bought this PC. Till date, I’m not sure if this guy hoodwinks me with all his tall claims

I had a budget of around 10k INR in mind. This is what I ended up with, after overshooting it by around 1.3k:

• AMD Althon64 X2 4600 (dual core, clock speed of 2.4GHz)
• Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H mobo based on the AMD 780G chipset, featuring ATI Radeon 3200 HD IGP
• 2GB DDR 667 RAM
• Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA hard drive
• A new 400W SMPS from a shady brand (Xtec, if I remember correctly)

This does look neat!

The motherboard itself was highly rated by tech articles on the internet, and it does boast an array of features. I’ve yet to test the performance of the IGP on this board. As per this Techtree.com article, this IGP is capable of allowing playable framerates at medium resolutions/quality details for quite recent games such as F.E.A.R, HL2: Lost Coast and Quake 4! Far Cry should also be playable, woo hoo!

The folks at the store assembled this setup, and I brought the cabinet home. Powered on, and was greeted with this message:

GRUB: Loading stage 1.5…. Read Error

Since I had two hard drives now (an older 80GB IDE/PATA drive, and the new SATA drive), I was half expecting things to go wrong. Hence, I had planned to perform a fresh dual boot setup of Ubuntu Hardy Heron and Windows XP on the new SATA drive. When I popped in the Windows XP bootable disc, and rebooted the system, the CD failed to boot.

I rebooted into the BIOS, and could not find the DVD drive listed anywhere. Trying to plug in the IDE cable and power supply for the DVD drive again did not help. Finally it dawned upon me that the master-slave configuration of the drive was probably incorrect for my new configuration. I switched the jumper at the back of the DVD drive. Voila! Not only was the DVD drive recognized, but GRUB was also able to boot everything properly!

I still plan to perform fresh OS installs on the SATA drive for better performance. For now, I’m continuing with my old XP install, and a fresh Ubuntu 8.04 install over the 7.10 installation (since I’ve had a few problems with ATI drivers on Gutsy, and wanted an excuse to upgrade to Hardy anyway).

I’ll probably post on the performance of the IGP and the new processor/RAM combo later. But from what I’ve seen, the toil has been well worth it

~Raj

I can’t remember when, (I’d say Standard 9 if I’d have to hazard a guess), our text included Ulysses - one of the best poems I’ve ever read.

That’s not to say that I’m a connoisseur at English poetry though!

As I venture into the world of blogging, I thought it might be apt to post the last few lines from this Alfred Lord Tennyson classic:

…. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I remember our teacher, Mrs. Anuradha Choudhury, and her attempts to make a bunch of class 9 hooligans understand the great verse of Tennyson, at my alma-mater, St. Xaviers Collegiate School, Calcutta.

Those were the days, indeed!

~Raj

PS: The full poem can be read here.