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From: eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Current Status of Karp Challenge
Message-ID: <1578@ames.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Jul-86 04:11:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.1578
Posted: Mon Jul 21 04:11:41 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Jul-86 00:55:08 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 29

I gave my performance measurement talk at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific
Center last week at the invitation of Alan Karp.  I thought I might relay
the current status of the challenge since it was mentioned in net.arch.

First, there is some misunderstanding about the challenge.  The challenge
was to demonstrate some factor of 100 simple speedup of some program
running on a computer.  So, the Connection Machine with 64K processors
falls down in two areas: 1) the computer must be an MIMD rather than
SIMD type (Multiple Instruction Stream Multiple Data Stream from
Flynn's [1966] classification scheme).  2) The program must be capable of
running on a single CPU of said computer.

Second, the only person to even suggest a possible challenge had an ICL DAP.
The DAP fails for the same reasons the CM does: SIMD and non-single CPU
execution.  If you are unfamiliar with the DAP, better do some homework,
they've been around a few years.  And if you don't know who ICL is, your
DEC/IBM/or other American bias is showing.

Third the Karp prize is strictly intended to be token.  This prize is
like the prizes offered by guys like Adleman for breaking the RSA
public key encryption algorithm or Hellman (who paid Adleman for breaking
his algorithm).

From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
  NASA Ames Research Center
  com'on do you trust Reply commands with all these different mailers?
  {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,decwrl,tektronix,allegra}!ames!aurora!eugene
  eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA