Observations from Uppsala – Computer simulation, programming, software, technology, research, and more (since 2007)

Just Get the Right Tool!

We recently repaired a fence in our back yard. Not very exciting, but it provides a good case study in how to think about getting the right tools for the job. Or not getting the right tools. And the trade-offs inherent in improving the tools vs just getting a job done with what you have at hand. Which is something all software developers should have sympathy with.

Delivering AI-Based Solutions is not Always Easy

One of the nice properties of delivering software that users install on their own machines is that once the software has been built and shipped, the cost of running it is handed over to the user. The cost per installation and per user is minimal in terms of compute load on the developing company. Of course there are costs for things like support, but that is different. However, having the customer provide the compute resources is not necessarily that easy when it comes to AI-based setups.

Useful Instruction Set Computing

I tend to get into discussions about computer processor instruction-set architecture (ISA) design. ISA design is far from my day job, but it is an interesting topic where everyone working with computers at the machine level have opinions. Typically based on a mix of personal experience and fond memories of particular machines. This in turn leads to intricate and intriguing arguments. In this blog, I will talk about my take on the current state of instruction sets in industry and the age-old “complexity of instruction set” question.

Schloss Dagstuhl (and a Seminar and Cerebras)

A month ago, I participated in a seminar at Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany, about “Discrete Algorithms on Modern and Emerging Compute Infrastructure”. Not my usual cup of tea, but it was very interesting and insightful nevertheless. I have attended a Dagstuhl seminar once before, back in 2003.

Subscription Software Revisited: SnagIt

The trend to make everything into a subscription service instead of a pay-once use-forever model is well-established. I have defended it for professional software, and I am a mostly happy user of Microsoft365. Still, I must admit that I felt mildly annoyed when my favorite screen capture program, SnagIt, announced they would be switching to a subscription-only model.

Teaching a Class at Uppsala University

In the first quarter of 2024, I did a short stint as a teacher at Uppsala University. I taught the class “platform-spanning systems” (PSS), which is a fourth-year/masters-level course for engineering and computer science students. It was fun and rewarding to be back at the university, and I probably learnt as much as the my students.

Embedded Conference Scandinavia 2024

The Embedded Conference Scandinavia took place at Kistamässan in Kista, Sweden, on April 10 and 11 2024. This was a reboot of a show that used to run as a small tradeshow/exhibition plus technical talks until the pandemic hit. There was no Embedded Show anymore, just the Embedded Conference and its speaker program. The ECS was instead co-located with Elektronikmässan, the long-running and apparently thriving gathering for “electronics” companies in Sweden.

Visiting Prague

Over Easter, I took a short trip to Prague with parts of the family. It is a fascinating place – full of tourists and tourist businesses, but still feeling informal and homey. We tried to climb as many towers as we possibly could and visited a ton of sights in a few intense days.

“RISC-V in Practice” – Computer and System Architecture Unraveled Event Three

On Wednesday, March 13, we had our third CaSA, Computer and System Architecture Unraveled, meetup. Same place as the previous, the 25^th floor of the Kista Science Tower building, thanks to the kind sponsorship of Vasakronan and our collaboration with Kista Science City. The theme this time was “The RISC-V ISA in Practice”, with two speakers named Björn. Another great event!

Intel Blog: How to Boot Linux on Virtual Platform

Booting a software stack on a virtual platform is a necessary part of most software flows. It might seem simple, but in practice there are many different ways that it can happen.

In a recent Intel Blog post, I go through five ways to boot Linux on virtual platforms. Including the cases of doing it just like the hardware, but also how to “cheat” and directly boot from a kernel without first wrapping it in a disk image or similar.

DVCon Europe 2023 – 10th Anniversary Edition

The 2023 DVCon (Design and Verification) Europe conference took place on November 14 and 15, in the traditional location of the Holiday Inn Munich City Center. This was the 10^th time the conference took place, serving as an excuse for a great anniversary dinner. Also new was the addition of a research track to provide academics publishing at the conference with the academic credit their work deserves. This year had a large number of papers related to virtual platforms, so writing this report has taken me longer than usual. There was just so much to cover.

“Packet Networks are not Socket Science” – Computer and System Architecture Unraveled Event Two

On Wednesday, November 22, we had our second CaSA, Computer and System Architecture Unraveled, meetup. Same place in Kista as the last time, the 25^th floor of the Kista Science Tower building, thanks to the kind sponsorship of Vasakronan and our collaboration with Kista Science City. This time, the theme was networking – but not at the socket level. Per Holmberg presented how his team used “micro sleep” for power management in line-rate network processing, and Hans Brandberg talked about the Precision Time Protocol. Another great event!

Intel Blog: How Simics Executes Instructions

I recently added a blog post to the Intel Software blog about how the Intel Simics Simulator executes target-software instructions. The blog post appeared just before DVCon Europe (last week) and I did not have time to put a reflector here earlier.

IBM WatsonX-AI, Kista Tech Tuesday

I attended a short Tech Tuesday morning session at IBM here in Kista, Sweden, where IBM presented their WatsonX-AI and related technologies. Tech Tuesdays is a monthly technical event organized by Kista Science City, where companies in Kista present some aspect of their technology in a 30-minute session. IBM managed to get an impressive amount of content into that time!

The first Computer and System Architecture Unraveled Event in Kista – Great Speakers, Great Fun!

On the evening of the last Wednesday in September, we had our first CaSA, Computer and System Architecture Unraveled, event. CaSA is a meetup in Kista (Sweden) for people interested in computer architecture, system architecture, and how software and hardware interact down towards the lower levels of the stack. The topic for the inaugural event was “Core Count Explosion: A Challenge for Hardware and Software”, and it was great in some many ways!