Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fast divisionless computation of binomial coefficients
Suppose that I give you a set of n objects and I ask you to pick k distinct objects, thus forming a new subset. How many such subsets are there? If you have taken...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (February 22nd 2020)
In a large cohort study, the highest probability of reaching 90 years old was found for those drinking between 5g and 15 g of alcohol per day. This does not mean...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
My thoughts on how research funding is attributed in Canada to Computer Science
In Canada, most computer science professors seek funding with NSERC, the main Canadian funding agency for science and engineering. It is more or less the equivalent...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (February 8th 2020)
It is often believed that radiations are bad for you. To the contrary, David et al. report that life expectancy is approximately 2.5 years longer in people living...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Research should not stop with the research paper
The practice of academic research is based on the production of formal documents that undergo formal reviewers by peers. We routinely evaluate academics for jobs...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (February 1st 2019)
Almost all climate predictions are based on the so-called “business as usual” model, yet this model is based on assumptions that are unrealistically pessimistic...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Cost of a thread in C++ under Linux
Almost all our computers are made of several processing cores. Thus it can be efficient to “parallelize” expensive processing in a multicore manner. That is, instead...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (January 25th 2020)
Scientists found a way to increase the production of new neurons in the brains of mice, effectively rejuvenating the brains of old mice. (Source: Nature) How many...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Filling large arrays with zeroes quickly in C++
Travis Downs reports that some C++ compilers have trouble filling up arrays with values at high speed. Typically, to fill an array with some value, C++ programmers...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Allocating large blocks of memory: bare-metal C++ speeds
In a previous post, I benchmarked the allocation of large blocks of memory using idiomatic C++. I got a depressing result: the speed could be lower than 2 GB/s....
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How fast can you allocate a large block of memory in C++?
In C++, the most basic memory allocation code is just a call to the new operator: char *buf = new char[s]; According to a textbook interpretation, we just allocated...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (January 11th 2020)
The extra wealth that ones acquires by attending college is now estimated to be indistinguishable from zero. The authors control for the parent’s education andContinue...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How I teach database design
Most software runs on top of databases. These databases are organized logically, with a schema, that is a formal description. You have entities (your user), attributes...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
My Science and Technology review for 2019
I like to end every year with my selection of the most significant science and technology events. In 2019, you could buy a computer from Apple with 1.5 terabytes...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (December 21st 2019)
The number of research papers with more than 1000 authors is increasingly quickly and reaching many fields. Researchers at Facebook use neural networks to solve...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Xor Filters: Faster and Smaller Than Bloom Filters
In software, you frequently need to check whether some objects is in a set. For example, you might have a list of forbidden Web addresses. As someone enters a new...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
A look back to my 2010 predictions for 2020
Back in 2010, I wrote a post Who is going to need a database engine in 2020? Let me revisit some of my 2010 statements. Apple will sell desktops with 1 TB of RAM...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (December 14th 2019)
The computation capacity needed by artificial intelligence doubles every 3.4 months. In parallel, we are making fast progress in hardware and software: what took...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Are 64-bit random identifiers free from collision?
It is common in software system to map objects to unique identifiers. For example, you might map all web pages on the Internet to a unique identifier. Often, these...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog