Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!haven!vrdxhq!bms-at!stuart
From: stuart@bms-at.UUCP (Stuart Gathman)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: More math...
Summary: An example :-)
Message-ID: <170@bms-at.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jul 89 15:28:11 GMT
References: <5533@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <-286679999@hpcupt1.HP.COM>
Organization: Business Management Systems, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 13

In article <-286679999@hpcupt1.HP.COM>, mount@hpcupt1.HP.COM (John Mount) writes:
> Because unless your parallel processor has an *infinite* number of processors
> it is just a big serial machine (by any other name :-).  And if you do have
> an infinite amount of processor then NP-complete problems can be solved in
> polynomial time on such a beast (so NP-compeleteness becomes a little less
> interesting in this case).

In a sci-fi story by Asimov, they built such a beast in "hyper-space".  After
billions of years (polynomial time), it finished its computations and
said, "Let there be light . . .".
-- 
Stuart D. Gathman	<stuart@bms-at.uucp>
			<..!{vrdxhq|daitc}!bms-at!stuart>