I like receiving email/rss streams on new books in tech. It is one of my tools for tracking technology trends. Here is title from an O’Reilly Safari service, Software Pipelines: The Key to capitalizing on multi-core revolution, that caught my attention.
Software Pipelines is a new architecture that specifically addresses the problem of using parallel processing in the multi-core era. It is a new approach to the problem. Pipeline technology abstracts the complexities of parallel computing and makes it possible to use the power of the new CPUs for business applications. The ability to implement performance-based SOA applications and other high performance computing applications in the enterprise hangs in the balance.
I recall reading way back in mid 80’s about pipes in Unix. In fact a book I really liked (and still on my bookshelf) called Software Tools. Its philosophy and some what similar to Unix philosophy of building small interoperable tools that work together using Unix Pipes.
The technology of software pipelines, while conceptually similar, is a lot different. While Unix pipes worked well for a set of programs on the same machine, we need some thing different for a set of applications running on different CPUs. I am looking forward to reading this book and understanding how software pipelines work.
This book was written primarily for software architects, application developers, and application development managers who need high-performance, scalable business applications. Project managers, software quality assurance specialists, and IT operations managers will also find it useful; however, the main focus is software development.