3 ms·

Wow, this brings back vivid memories of late 80's, when I was assigned to write atan2 by hand on Multiflow's 28/14/7-wide VLIW machines. (Everyone in the compa

by cpr 9y ago

Wow, this brings back vivid memories of late 80's, when I was assigned to write atan2 by hand on Multiflow's 28/14/7-wide VLIW machines. (Everyone in the company who could hand-code (even us OS guys and gals ;-) was assigned a math routine--it was an all-hands-on-deck kind of performance situation in our competition with Alliant and Convex.) Imagine trying to hand-schedule up to 28 operations at once, including all memory loads with 12 or 14 (forget now) clocks to memory, all bus contending had to be done by hand, etc, etc. What fun! That's why VLIW compilers were so challenging to write: all resources software-managed. But, alas, in the end the mini-super market died. We all lost to Sun eventually, as everyone wanted his own machine, even if much less powerful--never bet against having the computer power closer to the user (starting with mainframes): minicomputer / workstation / PC / mobile / etc, right down the line to today. (What's going to displace mobile, IoT? Doesn't seem likely. Perhaps when you reach the limit of what you can hold in your hand, that's the last form factor? I don't believe wearable computing will ever really catch on, but I'm old fustian.)

orf 9y ago
> I don't believe wearable computing will ever really catch on, but I'm old fustian.) I used to think the same, but it seems to me that phones are the first step. A huge number of people have a mini computer on their persons all day. It's only a matter of time before it becomes even more integrated. Will be interesting to see, but I doubt the current form factors will win. Smart watches seem so... not it.
- kbenson 9y ago
  And also, with wearables it's not so much bringing a device closer, but a personal network of devices. The phone may still have it's place as the larges person-network computing device, but peripherals with their own small compute power and additional I/O get added to the network. Smart watches (biometric inputs, small always ready screen output), glasses (AR overlay output, line-of-sight and image recognition input), etc.
kjs3 9y ago
Memories! We had a Multiflow Trace, and a couple of guys smart enough to get good performance out of it with the help of the way-ahead-of-time compiler. Really interesting, weird machine. I hear tell bits of the compiler technology still live on. Good times.

by cpr 9y ago

orf 9y ago

> I don't believe wearable computing will ever really catch on, but I'm old fustian.) I used to think the same, but it seems to me that phones are the first step. A huge number of people have a mini computer on their persons all day. It's only a matter of time before it becomes even more integrated. Will be interesting to see, but I doubt the current form factors will win. Smart watches seem so... not it.

kbenson 9y ago
And also, with wearables it's not so much bringing a device closer, but a personal network of devices. The phone may still have it's place as the larges person-network computing device, but peripherals with their own small compute power and additional I/O get added to the network. Smart watches (biometric inputs, small always ready screen output), glasses (AR overlay output, line-of-sight and image recognition input), etc.

kjs3 9y ago

Memories! We had a Multiflow Trace, and a couple of guys smart enough to get good performance out of it with the help of the way-ahead-of-time compiler. Really interesting, weird machine. I hear tell bits of the compiler technology still live on. Good times.