Geek in Practice

Exactly two days after my pleasant chat with a developer of Shaheen Blue Gene computer, the 14th most powerful computer in the world, I start a course in Electric Engineering department at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) called Digital Systems Engineering. It talks about the architecture of microprocessors and how to program them. Sounds fun so far, only thing is we’re gonna study the 8086 and 8088 processors which are, to computers, like dinosaurs to us. Now, one might argue that we should know the basics of microprocessing in order to understand more modern processors. My only question is, why, then, do we need to go all the way and build those old processors if we’re intended to use, learn and perhaps help develop much more modern processors? Why not know the simple basics and just move on?

I don’t want to start ranting about my Uni, I know I will not stop, but it’s something I noticed in KFUPM. They tend to teach some obsolete technologies for a reason I never figured out. Another example, there is a course that teaches Fortran language (Old and almost unused anymore language) and many departments require it in order to finish freshman year! Oh well, I hope one day someone with a little sense changes that.

After two good weeks in London, I think I had a good break. Is it good enough to start my mental engines again? I think not! But I’ll do it anyway! All in all, It was well needed and well deserved and I’m more relaxed now than two weeks ago for sure!

When I started this post I was still in London but for some reason, not even known to me,I didn’t continue my draft. I wanted to just have a look back at my trip to London. Luckily for me, I didn’t go all the way. On my way back, I sat next to some Englishman in the first row of a world traveler class on a British Airways Boeing 767. The guy turns out to be Andrew Wenfer, an IBM corporate senior employee. He was on the way to Saudi Arabia because he was on a mission to build a supercomputer. Wait, what? He is one of the developers responsible to connect and build up Shaheen Blue Gene/P in KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology), the 14th most powerful computer in the world, in my homeland. Being a geek, I was so excited, of course! He showed me how a Blue Gene computer is assembled, connected, and ran! What got me more excited is that I knew already about Shaheen which operating system is Linux based (see: The Linuxologist and Top500.org).

This machine is so super it has 16,384 quadcore CPUs distributed to 16 racks, each rack has 1024 CPUs. WOW! To add more to the awe, each cpu is directly connected to 6 other ones forming a cube of CPUs around each and every CPU. The ones on the edges are connected to the other end so they form a full cycle (such system is called Taurus, developed also by IBM). And they all run together simultaneously, could run at NO TIME SHARING! According to Mr. Wenfer, it consumes 40 megawatts a day yet it’s still green in comparison to our regular computers! Also, they had a very sophisticated cooling system which keeps all CPUs on a relatively low temperature. I was, honestly, dumbstruck when showed me the photos of a Blue Gene computer he built, they look magnificent. He also showed me how it works, virtually. I wish to directly thank King Abdullah for the most powerful computer in the middle east.

Other than that, we talked about the regular Saudi-Westerner chat. Weather, Islam, weather, human rights,weather, women rights… etc. I always thought that, lately, westerners learned a little more about Saudi Arabia due the exposure we had in the last few years but turns out that they only know that women don’t drive around here, lol!

Yesterday was so eventful I can’t make it pass by without blogging. I attended Lion King musical and it was very nice. It brought me back to childhood memories so vivid that I was jumping inside. I gotta admit, it lives in me and you should admit also that  it lives in you! The only thing I wished that happened yesterday was me attending the Wimbledon final between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer (Congrats to the latter though). The other things that I did yesterday is attending my first 3D movie, that is Ice Age 3. What fascinated me about that movie is how simply a light polarizer can change that fuzzy 2D image to 3D.

From a theoretical point of view, it’s darn easy. But if someone knows a real director I’d be thankful if he/she asked if it’s easy to do practically. It’s all about how to create an illusion of depth as a third dimension. How’s that done? Easy peasy. All you need is two cameras set facing each other with 90-degree mirrors in between to bring in the scene in. Each camera will work as one of our eyes. Of course, for the cameras to work like our eyes they have to be in perfect synchronization and in identical shooting specs. The rest of the trick is done within our eyes and brain. Our brain will interpret each of the images seen in each eye as single three-dimensional image. I expect some geek somewhere in the world to pop up and say “Dude! That’s old school!”. Well yeah of course, I’m speaking to non geeks. Every 3d movie we see in the movie industry is created in some alteration of what I’ve just explained. Of course, it’s easier to do now that CGI is used almost in every movie there is in Hollywood!

To go more deeply, The nowadays used technology is based on polarizing filters that either linearly (90 degrees of each other) or circularly (right handed for one and left handed for another) polarize the two images and then superimpose them on top of each other. To depolarize the images (using cheap polarizing eyeglasses, almost same material in sunglasses),  is to let each eye see one image and trick the brain. For linearly polarized images we use orthogonal polarizers to see each image and for circular images we use same for same (right for right and left for left) polarizers. When we polarize a superimposed image that contains two polarized images (yes two polarizations occur, like encoding and decoding), each filter will only show one of the two images which is exactly what’s required for 3d imagery!

Pretty simple, huh?

Today after I had lunch/dinner with the family in the most amazing Persian restaurant*, a cousin called me and tricked me to go to Edgware Road in London (An Arab “colony”, for those never been here). He knew that I’ve never been there and he knew that I would never want to go there so he just told me the directions and I found myself there (being all new to London). Ok, I admit, there’s nothing to be ashamed of but I try to avoid my people here for reasons I’d rather keep for myself. Anyway, that doesn’t even relate to my subject, what I want to say is. He assured me why I should stick with my alias, geek in practice that is.

I know how geeky/nerdy I am, but I never looked eye-to-eye to people who call me a geek or a nerd. Let me explain a bit, when I’m in Saudi there are few people who I can debate with in few occasions. Mostly, it’s just chitchat and sport talk (read football, soccer for Americans). Hence, I usually keep my debatable thoughts for myself most of the time which leads us to my point, that is, how on earth do you know I’m a geek or not? However, when my cousin and I were talking we were exclusively debating about everything from society to finance to politics to engineering (of course to our extends of knowledge). We agreed on many things but I played a devil’s advocate just to enjoy discussion (I think he did as well, sometimes). I felt at the end of our evening that I am, actually, a geek in practice.

While I am pouring my thoughts into my keyboard, let me say something about us Saudis. We like to argue and we think arguing is debating but we lack the basics of any debate. We don’t see that arguing hurts others while a healthy debate enriches thought and diversifies minds. And at the end of the day, most of us believe that “debating” is unhealthy for our bodies, minds and souls and try to avoid it and consider some sort of “taboo”. Wait what? you read it right,we love to argue but try to avoid it most of the time but when we do engage ourselves in arguments we don’t respect our arguers. And that is exactly why sometimes I doubt my potential as a geek!

(*) Alounak, That’s for you Hish