Agner Fog
Danish computer scientist and anthropologist
- 1 min read
- 2 chapters
Related on Lably
Through Microarchitecture, Open source and Class (programming)
Social sciences
Agner Fog is the main investigator of Regality Theory, the proposition that the environment a group is in selects for certain psychological traits. As a result, a harsher environment selects for more regal (warlike) social structures while a safer environment selects for more kungic (peaceful) ones.
Sign in to keep reading
One more chapter is free with a Lably account.
Programming and mathematics
Optimization
Agner Fog is known as a "CPU analyst" to tech websites covering x86 CPUs. He maintains a five-volume manual for optimizing code for x86 CPUs, with details on the instruction timing and other features of individual microarchitectures. He also maintains a Vector Class Library for SIMD math, an assembly subroutine library ("asmlib"), as well as many other utilities.
Agner Fog has also written extensively on the behavior of Intel C++ Compiler and Intel MKL on non-Intel CPUs, coining the term "cripple AMD" to describe the bias.
Vector Class Library
Agner Fog is the main author of the C++ Vector Class Library. This is an open source C++ class library for optimizing SIMD code.
ForwardCom instruction set
Agner Fog has designed the ForwardCom instruction set. This is a high performance open source CPU Instruction set architecture with variable-length vector registers. The instruction set is neither RISC nor CISC, but a compromise with few instructions and many variants of each instruction.
Other subjects
Fog has written a few pseudorandom number generators with a variety of distributions, with a focus on performance (SIMD) and correctness with regard to floating-point behavior and statistical properties. These are used in simulations for his anthropology research.