12 ms·

Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989)

152 points by gauMah 8y ago

newnewpdro 8y ago
Feynman is one of the few dead people I wish I could have had many conversations with while on a long hike. His talk describing computers to a lay audience at the Esalen Institute [1] is my goto resource whenever someone asks me how computers work. It's from the same era as the referenced article, he's even wearing the same Thinking Machines shirt. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA
dang 8y ago
Many previous threads, but not for a couple years. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Richard%20Feynman%20and%20the%20Connection%20Machine%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Richard%20Feynman%20and%20the%... (We changed the URL above from https://web.archive.org/web/20070228104914/http://www.kurzweilai.net:80/articles/art0504.html?printable=1 https://web.archive.org/web/20070228104914/http://www.kurzwe...)
- Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
  I don't mind high quality content such as this being shared at regular intervals for the sake of new readers.
  - corysama 8y ago
    This one is totally worth bringing up once a year forever. In general I’m a huge fan of the Long Now organization. What they do really is worth your time and attention. Go through the archives. You’ll find so much of what you wish TED could be.
  - dang 8y ago
    Yes! The purpose of posting those links is to point new readers (and old ones!) at the earlier threads. Just to be clear, if the repost was inappropriate we'd have marked it [dupe] above. The rules for that are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
    - Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
      Thanks for the clarification.
gdubs 8y ago
This is one of those ones I’ll stop and read every time it gets posted. Bit of trivia: in the novel, “Jurassic Park”, the park’s supercomputer is a Cray, but Spielberg picked a Connection Machine for the movie because he thought it looked cooler. Also, the artist Karl Sims did some outstanding work using the Connection Machine that was mind blowing for the time, and still pretty darn cool today. The computer itself was part of the art installation: https://www.karlsims.com/genetic-images.html https://www.karlsims.com/genetic-images.html
- f2f 8y ago
  This is the fat-tree connection diagram for one of the cabinets of a CM-5. It was posted on a wall at one of the national labs in the US which had the pleasure of working with a CM-5 around the time War Games was in theatres. People still gushed about how nice that machine was to program 10-15 years later. SiCortex[1] tried to do something similar with their computers, unfortunately they failed and with them the last interesting connector architecture and the last interesting "supercomputer". even cray does linux now... http://i.imgur.com/jHtf4QB.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jHtf4QB.jpg 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiCortex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiCortex
- teddyh 8y ago
  > in the novel, “Jurassic Park”, the park’s supercomputer is a Cray, but Spielberg picked a Connection Machine for the movie Not just a Connection Machine: “You know anybody who can network eight Connection Machines and debug two million lines of code for what I bid for this job?” — Dennis Nedry
chj 8y ago
Don't read to the end, it is heart breaking.
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  It's not too bad if you have already read about Feynman's life and death. I liked the bits about telling and teaching.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
sdrothrock 8y ago
I'm glad this was posted despite being perennial -- it's the first time I've read it. Does anyone have any similar "classic" Feynman stories to share?
- yesenadam 8y ago
  He wrote a few books of reminiscences which are full of them, great reads. But this was the first time I've seen his...extremely ugly sexist behaviour displayed, not just hinted about. Very odd. In his books he's just a bit of a ladies man.
  - andyjohnson0 8y ago
    James Gleick's biography of Feynman, Genius, is a good read and complements the books Feynman wrote himself. > first time I've seen his...extremely ugly sexist behaviour displayed Not to excuse it, but he was the product of a different time.
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      Well, why say that? Of course it's an attempt at excusing it. I almost included a sentence saying "Yes, he was a product of an earlier time, but (civilized) people didn't go around treating women like that then any more than they do nowadays, i.e. not at all."
      - mywittyname 8y ago
        We look up to historical figures who owned slaves. There were people who were morally opposed to slavery back then as well. The fact is, people who accomplished great things also engaged in morally questionable stuff as well. If we try to erase all of these figures from our history books, they'll end up empty. We have to accept that social mores fluctuate over the generations and read history with the appropriate perspective.
        JKCalhoun 8y ago
W0lf 8y ago
This is probably the most important habit of Feynman, I tried to incorporate into my own life and studying: "Then he would set to work, scribbling on a pad of paper and staring at the results. While he was in the middle of this kind of puzzle solving he was impossible to interrupt. "Don't bug me. I'm busy," he would say without even looking up. Eventually he would either decide the problem was too hard (in which case he lost interest), or he would find a solution (in which case he spent the next day or two explaining it to anyone who listened). In this way he worked on problems in database searches, geophysical modeling, protein folding, analyzing images, and reading insurance forms."
input_device 8y ago
"treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system" Any additional information on this?
wuschel 8y ago
A very entertaining and informative essay. Could perhaps someone try to elaborate on the calculation of buffers needed per chip? Quote: To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a bit strange. Feynman's router equations were in terms of variables representing continuous quantities such as "the average number of 1 bits in a message address." I was much more accustomed to seeing analysis in terms of inductive proof and case analysis than taking the derivative of "the number of 1's" with respect to time. How did he do it, conceptionally, and in practice?
- aeternus 8y ago
  The problem sounds like it can be solved with queueing theory. The (common) inductive proof method is covered by the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory#Example_analysis_of_an_M/M/1_queue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory#Example_analys... However since the arrival of messages can be modeled as a probabilistic or continuous rate, differential equations can also be used. I'm not sure if this is how Feynman did it, but this paper shows how to model queueing using differential equations: http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~rand/randpdf/ENOC2017_queueing.pdf http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~rand/randpdf/ENOC2017_queueing.p...
  - wuschel 8y ago
    Thanks for looking into this, and posting these directions!
JProthero 8y ago
I think this sentence from the essay does a nice job of summing up Feynman's character: 'The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else.' I'd recommend Hillis' Web of Stories interview series [1] to anyone who appreciated this piece. He shares several of the stories described in the essay in video form (e.g. 105, 106, 119, 127 & 234), and there are plenty of other anecdotes and insights worth listening to. I think Hillis is pretty interesting in his own right, but he's crossed paths with some other people in addition to Feynman that HN readers might be interested in hearing about: Marvin Minsky, Jeff Bezos, Freeman Dyson, Steve Jobs etc. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzo005LM6PTERy4uxq92sWe https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzo005LM6PT...

152 points by gauMah 8y ago

Feynman is one of the few dead people I wish I could have had many conversations with while on a long hike. His talk describing computers to a lay audience at the Esalen Institute [1] is my goto resource whenever someone asks me how computers work. It's from the same era as the referenced article, he's even wearing the same Thinking Machines shirt. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA

dang 8y ago

Many previous threads, but not for a couple years. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Richard%20Feynman%20and%20the%20Connection%20Machine%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Richard%20Feynman%20and%20the%... (We changed the URL above from https://web.archive.org/web/20070228104914/http://www.kurzweilai.net:80/articles/art0504.html?printable=1 https://web.archive.org/web/20070228104914/http://www.kurzwe...)

Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
I don't mind high quality content such as this being shared at regular intervals for the sake of new readers.
- corysama 8y ago
  This one is totally worth bringing up once a year forever. In general I’m a huge fan of the Long Now organization. What they do really is worth your time and attention. Go through the archives. You’ll find so much of what you wish TED could be.
- dang 8y ago
  Yes! The purpose of posting those links is to point new readers (and old ones!) at the earlier threads. Just to be clear, if the repost was inappropriate we'd have marked it [dupe] above. The rules for that are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
  - Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
    Thanks for the clarification.

gdubs 8y ago

This is one of those ones I’ll stop and read every time it gets posted. Bit of trivia: in the novel, “Jurassic Park”, the park’s supercomputer is a Cray, but Spielberg picked a Connection Machine for the movie because he thought it looked cooler. Also, the artist Karl Sims did some outstanding work using the Connection Machine that was mind blowing for the time, and still pretty darn cool today. The computer itself was part of the art installation: https://www.karlsims.com/genetic-images.html https://www.karlsims.com/genetic-images.html

f2f 8y ago
This is the fat-tree connection diagram for one of the cabinets of a CM-5. It was posted on a wall at one of the national labs in the US which had the pleasure of working with a CM-5 around the time War Games was in theatres. People still gushed about how nice that machine was to program 10-15 years later. SiCortex[1] tried to do something similar with their computers, unfortunately they failed and with them the last interesting connector architecture and the last interesting "supercomputer". even cray does linux now... http://i.imgur.com/jHtf4QB.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jHtf4QB.jpg 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiCortex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiCortex
teddyh 8y ago
> in the novel, “Jurassic Park”, the park’s supercomputer is a Cray, but Spielberg picked a Connection Machine for the movie Not just a Connection Machine: “You know anybody who can network eight Connection Machines and debug two million lines of code for what I bid for this job?” — Dennis Nedry

chj 8y ago

Don't read to the end, it is heart breaking.

themodelplumber 8y ago
It's not too bad if you have already read about Feynman's life and death. I liked the bits about telling and teaching.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

sdrothrock 8y ago

I'm glad this was posted despite being perennial -- it's the first time I've read it. Does anyone have any similar "classic" Feynman stories to share?

yesenadam 8y ago
He wrote a few books of reminiscences which are full of them, great reads. But this was the first time I've seen his...extremely ugly sexist behaviour displayed, not just hinted about. Very odd. In his books he's just a bit of a ladies man.
- andyjohnson0 8y ago
  James Gleick's biography of Feynman, Genius, is a good read and complements the books Feynman wrote himself. > first time I've seen his...extremely ugly sexist behaviour displayed Not to excuse it, but he was the product of a different time.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Well, why say that? Of course it's an attempt at excusing it. I almost included a sentence saying "Yes, he was a product of an earlier time, but (civilized) people didn't go around treating women like that then any more than they do nowadays, i.e. not at all."
    - mywittyname 8y ago
      We look up to historical figures who owned slaves. There were people who were morally opposed to slavery back then as well. The fact is, people who accomplished great things also engaged in morally questionable stuff as well. If we try to erase all of these figures from our history books, they'll end up empty. We have to accept that social mores fluctuate over the generations and read history with the appropriate perspective.
      - JKCalhoun 8y ago

W0lf 8y ago

This is probably the most important habit of Feynman, I tried to incorporate into my own life and studying: "Then he would set to work, scribbling on a pad of paper and staring at the results. While he was in the middle of this kind of puzzle solving he was impossible to interrupt. "Don't bug me. I'm busy," he would say without even looking up. Eventually he would either decide the problem was too hard (in which case he lost interest), or he would find a solution (in which case he spent the next day or two explaining it to anyone who listened). In this way he worked on problems in database searches, geophysical modeling, protein folding, analyzing images, and reading insurance forms."

input_device 8y ago

"treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system" Any additional information on this?

wuschel 8y ago

A very entertaining and informative essay. Could perhaps someone try to elaborate on the calculation of buffers needed per chip? Quote: To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a bit strange. Feynman's router equations were in terms of variables representing continuous quantities such as "the average number of 1 bits in a message address." I was much more accustomed to seeing analysis in terms of inductive proof and case analysis than taking the derivative of "the number of 1's" with respect to time. How did he do it, conceptionally, and in practice?

aeternus 8y ago
The problem sounds like it can be solved with queueing theory. The (common) inductive proof method is covered by the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory#Example_analysis_of_an_M/M/1_queue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory#Example_analys... However since the arrival of messages can be modeled as a probabilistic or continuous rate, differential equations can also be used. I'm not sure if this is how Feynman did it, but this paper shows how to model queueing using differential equations: http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~rand/randpdf/ENOC2017_queueing.pdf http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~rand/randpdf/ENOC2017_queueing.p...
- wuschel 8y ago
  Thanks for looking into this, and posting these directions!

JProthero 8y ago

I think this sentence from the essay does a nice job of summing up Feynman's character: 'The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else.' I'd recommend Hillis' Web of Stories interview series [1] to anyone who appreciated this piece. He shares several of the stories described in the essay in video form (e.g. 105, 106, 119, 127 & 234), and there are plenty of other anecdotes and insights worth listening to. I think Hillis is pretty interesting in his own right, but he's crossed paths with some other people in addition to Feynman that HN readers might be interested in hearing about: Marvin Minsky, Jeff Bezos, Freeman Dyson, Steve Jobs etc. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzo005LM6PTERy4uxq92sWe https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzo005LM6PT...