Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Path: utzoo!censor!geac!itcyyz!yrloc!rbe
From: rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky)
Subject: Re: Who Wants Massively Parallel Processors Anyway?
Message-ID: <1991Mar1.040712.24050@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM>
Reply-To: rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky)
Organization: I P Sharp Associates, Toronto
References: <3672@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP> <66231@brunix.UUCP> <9102271454.AA10080@NADC.NADC.NAVY.MIL>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 91 04:07:12 GMT


The question was: "who wants massive parallelism anyway..."?

Answer: 

Anybody with a large problem to solve or a problem to solve quickly
which  can be mapped onto such an architecture. 

For example: Dow Jones wants to supply a service to their tens of 
  thousands of customers, to let them search, for example, the New York
   Times articles for the past 10 years, for all occurences of 
   "not a crook" and "national security" within the same paragraph.

  The Connection Machine(with a piddly 64k processors) does a fairly
  bangup job of this.

I suspect the human genome problem is another candidate for massively
parallel processing.

The key to making MPP work lies in NOT having to program for it
explicitly. That is where languages such as J should be helpful --
reflect the way we think, rather than the way computers are built.

When I was Director of Research at I.P. Sharp (bought out by Reuters,
arch-enemy \\\\\competitor\\\\\\\\\\honorable opponent of Dow Jones),
I proposed we get an CM2 to look at such applications. 

This was refused by the forward-thinking management of Reuters,
who were happily exploring ideas such as mediocrely parallel systems,
and farms of sun workstations. I think both ideas, and the people who
were pushing them, are no longer at Reuters either. Food for thought...

Bob Bernecky 
Snake Island Research Inc.

ps: I'm not there any more either.