Complexity of Programming Modern Systems

Tonight I will pickup where I left off last time with a discussion on the complexity of programming modern system.

These systems are incredibly complex with many subtle layers of interaction that can dramatically impact the performance of the overall system. For example, one of the core algorithms that I developed for LineRate Systems improves on the previous state of the art by a full 10x. The trick was to pay attention to cross layer interactions and ensure that the hardware and software played nicely together.

To highlight the interactions I put together the following slide show which I think gives a better high level overview of the complexity than a simple static blog post could have. I will continue to expand on this theme in the next few posts.