Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!cit-vax!news From: news@cit-vax.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Hypercubes (place in life) Message-ID: <1881@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> Date: Fri, 27-Feb-87 15:38:53 EST Article-I.D.: cit-vax.1881 Posted: Fri Feb 27 15:38:53 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 1-Mar-87 11:08:48 EST References: <5699@amdahl.UUCP> <1210@ogcvax.UUCP> <1216@ogcvax.UUCP> Reply-To: jon@oddhack.UUCP (Jon Leech) Organization: California Institute of Technology Lines: 30 Organization : California Institute of Technology Keywords: From: jon@oddhack.Caltech.Edu (Jon Leech) Path: oddhack!jon In article <1216@ogcvax.UUCP> pase@ogcvax.UUCP (Douglas M. Pase) writes: >required, the iPSC is probably not appropriate. Geoffrey Fox of CalTech >presented a paper in one of the 1984 conferences extolling some of the virtues >of a hypercube architecture (NOTE: NOT an iPSC - the iPSC is based on Fox's >design) for computing. This is a common misconception which I will attempt to correct. The original Caltech Cosmic Cubes (sitting not 20 feet from me), were put together by a team led by two professors - Fox & Chuck Seitz of CS - and a number of students from both Physics & CS. The two hypercube groups split up and have gone their separate ways since then, but please give credit where it's due, to Seitz. Fox might like to think he did it all by himself, but that's not the case. I do generally agree with Eugene Miya's assessment of hypercubes, though. I think it is a big mistake for people to attempt to do practical work using machines which are still very much research projects themselves (as I am finding in attempting to do my MS work on the cubes here). The biggest problems from my point of view are the terribly immature software environments (debugging? what's that?) and extremely slow communications to the cube hosts. -- Jon Leech (jon@csvax.caltech.edu || ...seismo!cit-vax!jon) Caltech Computer Science Graphics Group __@/