4 ms·
A computer that expands your vision by looking at the whole problem at once
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoIt is however nice to see that the overly inflated claims of each new piece of tech is not a modern disease (by modern of course I mean the past six months)
- otikik 4y agoThe marketing department was given free reign on this one.
- codeflo 4y agoNeeds (1986) in the title. But if you add references to deep learning and metaverse, replace the font with Helvetica, and add a few flatly shaded hand-drawings of a cute animal mascot, this could actually be printed today.
- omneity 4y agoIs this the machine that Richard Feynman was working on? I believe he was hired by TMC to work on some topological problems for a massively parallel computer around a similar time.
- lifeisstillgood 4y agohttps://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machin... >>> We were arguing about what the name of the company should be when 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 ...
- omneity 4y agoFascinating! Thank you for the reference. The Connecting Machine looks like a nerd dream. Massively parallel with a high level language and API. I believe we can see Symbolics OS in the OP PDF. I wonder what went wrong with the vision for it not to come to fruition. Hopefully not just a “boring” technological limitation.
- ergonaught 4y agoFor the rabbit hole divers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine
- ultra_nick 4y agoWere they building a FPGA, DPU, or graph processing unit? They knew a lot more about computing than I expected.
- stuart78 4y agoI love a matrix of red flashing dots, but did these serve a real purpose on machines like this? Feels quite obtuse as a means of delivering feedback. Especially since a machine like this could drive a comparatively information-dense CRT display.
- helf 4y agoIt was to look impressive tbh. I love these units. The LEDs, iirc, were tied to the processors being active or accessing memory or something. I forget exactly what. It wasn’t really for information purposes but for looking impressive. And impressive it is. There’s one at a museum in GA that is wired up to randomly blink the LEDs and it’s the best thing ever lol
- helf 4y agoAccording to Wikipedia: “ The panels were used to check the usage of the processing nodes, and to run diagnostics.”
- nla 4y agoWhatever happened to massive parallelism anyway? SMP seems to have killed it, but curious what you guys think?
- ahefner 4y agoIt became your GPU.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]