The number of cores integrated onto a single die is expected to climb steadily in the foreseeable future. This move to many-core chips is driven by a need to optimize performance per watt. How best to connect these cores and how to program the resulting many-core processor, however, is an open research question. Designs vary from GPUs to cache-coherent shared memory multiprocessors to pure distributed memory chips. The 48-core SCC processor reported in this paper is an intermediate case, sharing traits of message passing and shared memory architectures.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xe_xA2FYM0 We were in Portland over the weekend, and look what we saw - 8000 naked Portlanders out for a ride as part of the World Naked Bike Ride. This makes the Portland event about eight times bigger than the equivalent London event - wow!

We arrived in New Orleans just in time to catch in front of the first really big storm of the summer, a great opportunity to stay put and explore the delights of the city. And what amazing luck - we arrived in New Orleans just in time for the first weekend of Jazz Fest. We decided to skip the outdoor festival events because of the bad weather but we did catch some great live Jazz in the French Quarter.

Wow, I can’t belive it has been over a week since I last posted. We have been through the amazing dunes in White Sands, then off for a great drive through cowboy county to the International UFO museum at Roswell (a little cheesy, but still fun). Next we headed across the Texas pan handle to Fredericksburg, San Antonio (for the Alamo and river walk) before heading over to Austin. This whole area is so beautiful and the people are so friendly - Donna and I are really loving the Lone Star State.

[ ](/u/2010/04/12/arizona.jpg) From the old London Bridge at Lake Havasau to Flagstaff and Sedona then on to Phoenix and Tucson and finally Tombstone, Arizona has presented such a diverse persona's that it is almost impossible to form a coherent opinion. The mountains, the cliffs, the desert are all so beautiful and of a scale that still boggles my British derived preconceptions. If I have a reservation, it is that popular sites such as the town of Sedona wear such an obvious Hollywood/Disney sheen thats sits at odds with the natural surrounding beauty.

[ ](/u/2010/04/04/grand_canyon.jpg) What an amazing weekend - after checking out the shows and boutiques in Las Vegas, we took an aerial sightseeing tour of the Hoover Dam and the west rim of the Grand Canyon. Then we descended the 4,000 feet from the top of the Canyon to the valley floor by helicopter for a wonderful boat trip on the Colorado River.

I new that our road trip would take us to some weird and wonderful places, but I didn’t expect it to take us to the planet Shakari at the center of the universe - yet here we are. We’ll actually these are the Trona Pinnacles in the California desert, but they have been the backdrop of many sci-fi movies and television series including Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Battlestar Galactica, Lost in Space, and Planet of the Apes.

There are many word to describe the Pacific coast - rugged, desolate, stunning but I think the best description for the last two days should be bloody windy! We were buffeted by driving rain all the way from Reedsport to Mendicino. The sea at Port Orford gets so rough that the boats have to be lifted out of the harbour by crane to prevent the high winds from smashing them against the jagged rocks.

What a beautiful day to start our trip - a short drive down the Willamette Valley took us to Silver Falls State Park, Oregon’s largest, for a pleasant walk with the dogs in the afternoon sun. Then onwards southwest to the coast for our last night in Oregon for many weeks.

[ ](/u/2010/03/09/map.png) It's finally arrived - no more work for me for the next 10 weeks as we head off on our [Great American Road Trip](/2009/10/31/sabbatical-2010). The [plans](http://sabbatical.neotextus.org) are all in place, at least as much as we need plans - this should be an amazing trip.