Do I need strong mathematical bases to work in the memory subsystem?

Ruben Safir ruben at mrbrklyn.com
Wed Oct 2 23:42:04 EDT 2019


On 10/2/19 11:35 PM, Valdis Klētnieks wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Oct 2019 21:47:42 -0400, Ruben Safir said:
> 
>> I've heard this for years and when I went back for my PhD and Masters
>> degree in comp sci, I found out, low and behold, this is just not true.
> 
> The question was specific to *kernel* development.

Actually yes


> 
> Look around.  Does Linus have a PhD?  How many people at the last Kernel Plumber's
> or Kernel Summit have PhDs?
> 

Linus has a Masters in Comp Sci, not that he is the greatest engineer ever.

> I'm willing to bet that there's very few PhD's in CS listed in MAINTAINERS.  And
> those that are, are probably coincidental...
> 

I can't testify to that, but there are ton of Master Degree coders and a
lot of mathamaticians.

General plumbing is not needed, but predictive trees, and crypto
certainly do and some hardware problems need calc, or even integration.

The harder the job, the more math is needed.

>> If you hope to do anything that is not elementry, you need serious math
>> for the algorithms, not to mention to complete the jobs being done.
>>
>> Knowing math is the real key to unlocking to potential of the power of
>> computational mathmatics.
> 
> If you're doing that sort of mathematics *inside the kernel*, there's probably something
> wrong with your overall design.
> 

Maybe, but I don't think so.  And the hardware is getting more exotic.

> Just sayin'.
> 
> 
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