4 ms·
Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine
- TY 17y agoGreat article! It's been posted and discussed here several times before though: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723361 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723361 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191212 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191212
- alfredp 17y agoOops didn't mean to dup! I came across it because of all the cloud computing stuff that's happening - and reminded me of when all the powerful computing came down in price. Just wanted to go back in time to see how people used up all the extra computing power.
- bliss 17y agoThanks for reposting... It's new to me! I'm instantly thinking about IBM's cell processors and how much the connection machine parallel concepts fed into their design.
- roundsquare 17y agoSeems like the kind of thing that is okay to repost, at least once in a while. Its not really "breaking news."
- rbanffy 17y agoOtherwise, the site would be called "Hacker Breaking News", or (ouch) "Breaking Hacker News".
- roundsquare 17y agoSorry, what I meant is that breaking or recent news being reposted is problematic. But classics being reposted every so often isn't bad since you'll certainly get new commentary on it.
- rbanffy 17y agoNo need to be sorry. I was trying to be funny ;-)
- mark_h 17y agoHard to believe this hasn't been posted before, but this is one of my favourite Feynman stories (collection of, really) ever. Absolutely magical. (Worth re-visiting the other side of Thinking Machines too, I suppose: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Thinking-Machines.aspx http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Thinking-Machines.aspx)
- gchpaco 17y agoDo note the Ken Jones comment on that article basically repudiating the crude editorializing of the main article.
- jbellis 17y agoI couldn't find the comments section. Link?
- anonjon 17y agojust scroll down from the dailywtf article (http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Thinking-Machines.aspx?pg=3#194568 http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Thinking-Machines.aspx?pg=3#... for Ken Jones).
- mark_h 17y agoI hadn't read that, thanks. I'm glad it wasn't quite how it was made out, but it also makes it a bit sadder that they died.
- mark_l_watson 17y agoAn old, but excellent article. I had the good fortune, in ancient history, to get some hacking time in on the first type of Connection Machine (the SIMD one). And the best part was, wait for it ..., was that you programmed it in *Lisp.
- philh 17y ago>Richard walked in, saluted, and said, "Richard Feynman reporting for duty. OK, boss, what's my assignment?" The assembled group of not-quite-graduated MIT students was astounded. > After a hurried private discussion ("I don't know, you hired him..."), we informed Richard that his assignment would be to advise on the application of parallel processing to scientific problems. > "That sounds like a bunch of baloney," he said. "Give me something real to do." > So we sent him out to buy some office supplies. I love this bit. There's the aspect that everyone mentions, how Feynman is happy to do something as seemingly menial as get office supplies, despite his qualifications. But the students' reaction is also fun to think about. Like if a regular working guy was given a million dollars, and his first reaction was "man, what am I going to do with this?" It takes him a while to realise what new opportunities he has. And then I imagine that Feynman recognises this reaction in them, and enjoys watching it. It's a form of good-natured teasing. I don't know if the actual thought processes were anything like this. But I like to think they were.
- jrockway 17y agoChores like this are a good time for multitasking. You can sit and stare out the window and think, or you can walk to the store and buy office supplies and think. In the second case, you've done two things at once; spent some time thinking, and got your office supplies. My apartment is very clean because I like to do something while I am thinking. Cleaning involves no thought on its own, and it's nice to not see any messes. For me anyway.
- ced 17y agoThe MIT seems like such a place to be for ambitious projects. Unfortunately I, like many others, attended a mediocre Canadian university because I didn't know any better. Questions for MIT alumni: 1. Is it still the mecca depicted in that kind of story? 2. Can you audit classes without being a MIT student, or do you need keycard access to even be on campus? Is it "culturally accepted"? Incidentally, if anyone in Montreal is working on ambitious technical stuff, drop me a line.
- rglovejoy 17y agoMIT is an "open" campus, in the sense that anyone can enter the buildings and go in the libraries or just look around. (Well, almost. The doors are mostly unlocked all day and night, but if you're wandering the halls at 3 in the morning and you don't look like a student, the campus police are going to ask you some questions.) One of the nice features about the campus is that the main academic buildings are connected to each other, either directly or via tunnels and skyways. This means that you don't ever have to step outside when you go from class to class, a real plus during the wintertime.
- jamesbkel 17y agoVery true. I occasionally walk over to the libraries when I need to hunker down and do some work/research. Fortunately, I look like a student...
- danh 17y agoExcellent article. Worth reading for this quote alone: "I suspect his motivation was not so much to understand the world as it was to find new ideas to explain. The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else."
- metaguri 17y agoone of my favorite articles of all time. the ending is... tearjerking, to be honest.
- spot 17y agoStrange he doesn't mention that the CM-2 added the floating point hardware (one stock FPU per 32 processors)...