CSci 4409 - Questions for The Free Lunch Is Over by Herb Sutter.

Questions on the material in the article

These questions will be used in an in-class assignment to summarize the article.

1. What were three main ways to increase program performance before the end of exponential growth of CPU clock speeds? Which of them cannot be continued anymore and why?
2. What does the author see as the main three sources for near-future increases in program performance? Describe them in detail.
3. What does the author predict as the new revolution in mainstream software development? Why? What knowledge will the new "revolution" require of software developers?
4. What are difficulties in developing concurrent applications?
5. What are CPU-bound applications? Why does the author expect the applications to become more CPU-bound?
6. According to the author, what programming language support will be needed for concurrency approaches?

Discussion questions

These questions are something for you to think about. They will be a basis of an open-ended discussion.

1. Which of the author's points and conclusions do you agree with?
2. Which of the author's arguments would you like more information on?
3. Which of the author's points and conclusions do you find debatable? Why?
4. What does the change towards concurrency mean to you as a software developer?

CSci 4409 course web site.