Parallel Computing in Native Code: New Trends and Old Friends

We've covered a lot of ground on both C++ and Parallel Computing on Channel 9 over the past few years. For C++ in particular, we've gone deep on many fronts with some of the main players in Microsoft's native programming world. Damien Watkins is one of these players and he's the brains behind most of the interviews you've seen on C9 (he thought them up and set them up). But who is Damien and what does he do?

Rick Molloy (PM) and Don McCrady(Development Lead) have been on Channel 9 before and they are both members of the native side of the parallel computing platform (PCP) house. It's no surprise that most teams who ship Microsoft software work closely with the C++ team given that most of our products are written in native code. The C++ team produces the de facto compiler that most teams at MS use. The PCP team is no exception.

We figured it would be fun to get a C++ player (Damien is a PM on the front-end native compiler team) and some Parallel People together in a room to discuss the native side of the Concurrency Problem (and possible solutions) and get a feel for the synergy between teams. The next version of C++, C++0x, will undoubtedly contain new language constructs that will make it easier to program many-core algorithms. We dig into some of these here as well as reveal for the first time on C9 some new members of the C++ language that you may not have heard about yet....

Enjoy. This is a great conversation among key thinkers who live in and innovate the native world.