Re: computing breakthrough - full text

From: hal@rain.org
Date: Wed Feb 10 1999 - 11:29:21 MST


My guess is that they haven't actually constructed the full sized
$26 million system, but a smaller version with fewer chips. That's
one nice thing about parallel processing systems; you can build the
size to suit the client's budget.

I worked in parallel processing back in the 80s and we always announced
the biggest possible configuration of our systems, but we couldn't
afford to build them until we had orders for them.

The reconfigurable architecture sounds good in theory but in practice the
question is how difficult it will be to program the machine for practical
problems. That was the big problem with the Connection Machine; you had
to use special programming languages to use it efficiently.

Hal (no relation)



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