4 ms·

Thinking Machines

15 points by prakash 19y ago

nazgulnarsil 19y ago
I hate people who waste money so lavishly. i guess its easy come easy go.
DaniFong 19y ago
'Its baffling inability to do floating point calculations...' Not so. From Dr. Dobb's interview with Guy Steele (http://www.ddj.com/java/184406029;jsessionid=S1LAIUWHYHNYGQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN?_requestid=127429 http://www.ddj.com/java/184406029;jsessionid=S1LAIUWHYHNYGQS...): Steele: I scribbled calculations on the back of an envelope. Okay, suppose you did the arithmetic bit serially, like the PDP-8S? A 32-bit floating-point multiply you have to multiply two 24-bit significands, that's going to take 600 time steps. For the additions, a logarithmic number of shifts, each will take 24 time steps...It turned out that a floating-point add would take about 1/2 a millisecond and a multiply a millisecond. Sounds terrible, but you've got 64,000 processors. Dr Dobb's Journal: So you could do 64,000 of these calculations in a millisecond. Steele: That's up in the range of 100 million operations a second, equivalent to a Cray 1, which was the supercomputer of the day. So after the lecture, I went up to Danny and said, "You said this is a terrible numeric machine, but I can tell it's approximately the equivalent of a Cray 1." And he replied, "Can we have dinner tonight?"
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- demallien 19y ago
  That's a fascinating interview that you have linked to. Way more interesting than the original article.
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    Yes, Steele is quite a character. I've been starting to get quite interested in Fortress as a language. I am thinking of becoming an active participant.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  I took the liberty of pointing folks at WTF to your link. Hope you don't mind. It's a wonderful interview.
mynameishere 19y ago
we wanted a dream we weren't going to outgrow Ah, good line. I want such a dream.
- michael_dorfman 19y ago
  Browning got there first: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
billroberts 19y ago
When I was studying for my PhD in Edinburgh around 1990/91, the group I was working with (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) bought a Connection Machine. Alas it was just being set up when I finished, so I never spent any time on it. So Thinking Machines had at least one customer!

15 points by prakash 19y ago

I hate people who waste money so lavishly. i guess its easy come easy go.

'Its baffling inability to do floating point calculations...' Not so. From Dr. Dobb's interview with Guy Steele (http://www.ddj.com/java/184406029;jsessionid=S1LAIUWHYHNYGQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN?_requestid=127429 http://www.ddj.com/java/184406029;jsessionid=S1LAIUWHYHNYGQS...): Steele: I scribbled calculations on the back of an envelope. Okay, suppose you did the arithmetic bit serially, like the PDP-8S? A 32-bit floating-point multiply you have to multiply two 24-bit significands, that's going to take 600 time steps. For the additions, a logarithmic number of shifts, each will take 24 time steps...It turned out that a floating-point add would take about 1/2 a millisecond and a multiply a millisecond. Sounds terrible, but you've got 64,000 processors. Dr Dobb's Journal: So you could do 64,000 of these calculations in a millisecond. Steele: That's up in the range of 100 million operations a second, equivalent to a Cray 1, which was the supercomputer of the day. So after the lecture, I went up to Danny and said, "You said this is a terrible numeric machine, but I can tell it's approximately the equivalent of a Cray 1." And he replied, "Can we have dinner tonight?"

deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
demallien 19y ago
That's a fascinating interview that you have linked to. Way more interesting than the original article.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  Yes, Steele is quite a character. I've been starting to get quite interested in Fortress as a language. I am thinking of becoming an active participant.
rbanffy 18y ago
I took the liberty of pointing folks at WTF to your link. Hope you don't mind. It's a wonderful interview.

mynameishere 19y ago

we wanted a dream we weren't going to outgrow Ah, good line. I want such a dream.

michael_dorfman 19y ago
Browning got there first: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

billroberts 19y ago

When I was studying for my PhD in Edinburgh around 1990/91, the group I was working with (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) bought a Connection Machine. Alas it was just being set up when I finished, so I never spent any time on it. So Thinking Machines had at least one customer!