Invented Here?

A news story describes a technological problem

• Racing to Gain Edge On Multicore Chips (WSJ March 17 2008)

Two major technology companies and two American universities are researching the problem

• Intel Press Announcement (March 18 2008)
• Microsoft Press Announcement (March 18 2008)
• Savas Parastatidis blog

But it seems the problem has already been solved, according to a couple of bloggers.

• This is precisely the problem that Threading Building Blocks is designed to address (Kevin Farnham)
• The Aleri CEP engine is just such a programming tool (Aleri CEP Blog)
  

Research and development is so fragmented these days, it is certainly possible that a solution already exists in some obscure corner. And large expensive research projects may not be good at producing small and simple solutions. So it is possible that Intel and Microsoft are wasting their research dollars.

But on the other hand, there are too many people - especially in software engineering - who have no real understanding of size. Small and simple solutions don't always scale. So it is just possible that Intel and Microsoft do know what they are doing after all.