Jonathan Beard's blog about systems, performance, and tech.https://www.jonathanbeard.io/https://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/19/more-cores-stopped-saving-us.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/19/more-cores-stopped-saving-us.htmlAdding cores quietly stopped working, and Amdahl told us why forty years early: scaling stalls on the one dependency you can't parallelize away, not the resource you keep buying.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/13/lossless-abstractions.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/13/lossless-abstractions.htmlWhen can you abstract something away for free? The condition has two names, context-free and zero mutual information, and almost nothing in a real system meets it.Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/12/abstraction-debt.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/12/abstraction-debt.htmlEvery abstraction is borrowed complexity: a quiet debt that comes due at 3am, in the layer you chose never to learn. On staying ahead of the bill.Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/11/vintage-glass-and-llamas.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/11/vintage-glass-and-llamas.htmlHow a wedding photo booth led me to a Nikon Zf, a bag of cheap vintage glass, manual focus, and a running habit of photographing tiny plastic llamas wherever work sends me.Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/10/machines-then-us.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/10/machines-then-us.htmlA systems architect's questions, pointed one level up: from cores and caches to minds, institutions, and the societies they run on.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/06/managing-parallelism-part-4.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/06/managing-parallelism-part-4.htmlManaging Parallel, Part 4: The Machine Underneath. Memory ordering (x86-TSO vs Arm), NUMA topology, and cache-line atomicitySat, 06 Jun 2026 09:05:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/06/cross-platform-home-storage-nfs-smb.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/06/cross-platform-home-storage-nfs-smb.htmlOne pool of storage that Linux, macOS, and Windows can all share: NFS for the compute nodes, SMB for the laptops, and the UID-alignment trick that stops NFS permissions from ruining your week. Built for home ML clusters and home labs.Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:03:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/06/managing-parallelism-part-3.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2026/06/06/managing-parallelism-part-3.htmlManaging Parallel, Part 3: When Parallel Goes Wrong. The short list of broken contracts behind most concurrency bugsSat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2017/08/14/managing-parallelism-part-2.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2017/08/14/managing-parallelism-part-2.htmlManaging Parallel, Part 2Mon, 14 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2016/11/20/using-cpp-from-c.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2016/11/20/using-cpp-from-c.htmlA step by step guide to using C++ in C.Sun, 20 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2016/09/04/managing-parallelism.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2016/09/04/managing-parallelism.htmlManaging Parallel, Part 1Sun, 04 Sep 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2016/04/01/template-type-sizing.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2016/04/01/template-type-sizing.htmlHow to use templates to build functions by type sizeFri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/12/08/github-pages-and-more.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/12/08/github-pages-and-more.htmlHow to host pages with GitHub pages, use jekyll and bootstrap together to make awesome pagesTue, 08 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/10/27/secure-language.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/10/27/secure-language.htmlThe folly of inventing secure languagesTue, 27 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/10/22/data-wrangling.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/10/22/data-wrangling.htmlData wrangling, why should you learn basic coding?Thu, 22 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/09/19/streaming-and-dataflow.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/09/19/streaming-and-dataflow.htmlWhat is stream processing and how does it relate to data-flow?Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/09/15/do-we-need-more-programming-languages.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/09/15/do-we-need-more-programming-languages.htmlA case for more programming languagesTue, 15 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/08/30/c-to-java-ipc.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/08/30/c-to-java-ipc.htmlTutorials and full code examples of how to use pipes and FIFOs to connect C/C++ compiled applications to a thread running inside a JVM using Java.Sun, 30 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/08/30/flex-bison-cpp.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/08/30/flex-bison-cpp.htmlHow to get flex and bison to work together in C++Sun, 30 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/01/07/system-timing.htmlhttps://www.jonathanbeard.io/blog/2015/01/07/system-timing.htmlHow to time software properly: from rdtsc to clock_gettime and everything in between, plus timer synchronization.Wed, 07 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT