Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!cit-vax!wen-king
From: wen-king@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (King Su)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: ATTACK OF KILLER MICROS
Message-ID: <12345@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: 23 Oct 89 18:42:53 GMT
References: <35825@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1081@m3.mfci.UUCP> <35896@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <33798@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <35977@lll-winken.LLNL.GO <27203@dhw68k.cts.com> <36549@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Reply-To: wen-king@cit-vax.UUCP (Wen-King Su)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 26

In article <36549@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> brooks@maddog.llnl.gov (Eugene Brooks) writes:
>......................................  Some students and professors at
<Caltech, which included someone by the name of Brooks before his rebirth into
>the "real" world of computational physics, were so desperate for computer
<cycles that they sidetracked the parallel computer industry by hooking up
>a bunch of Intel 8086-8087 powered boxes together in a system with miserable
<communication performance.  Industry, in its infinite wisdom, followed their
>lead by providing machines with even poorer communication performance.

Huh?  As far as I know, every commercially available multicomputer that
were built after our original multicomputer has a better communication
performance.  We did not lead anybody into anything, as Caltech CS has
never been a strong influence to the industry.  Nor have we advocated
low communication performances.  Today's multicomputers are as much as
three orders of magnitude better in message latency and throughput,
thanks to worm-hole routing hardwares.  There will be further
improvements when low-dimensional networks are in use.

Perhaps we could have provided more positive influences to the
industry, but we are operating under the guideline that university
research groups should not be turned into joint-ventures.  The tax-
payers did not give us money for us to make more money for ourselves.
-- 
/*------------------------------------------------------------------------*\
| Wen-King Su  wen-king@vlsi.caltech.edu  Caltech Corp of Cosmic Engineers |
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