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From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Processing
Message-ID: <6654@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Fri, 17-Apr-87 01:42:04 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.6654
Posted: Fri Apr 17 01:42:04 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 10:15:53 EST
References: <505@sw1e.UUCP> <110@hippo.UUCP> <6123@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <261@winchester.mips.UUCP> <6208@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <2105@mmintl.UUCP>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 25
In-reply-to: franka@mmintl.UUCP's message of 15 Apr 87 00:32:23 GMT

Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.4 of Mon Mar 23 1987 on bu-cs (berkeley-unix)



No Frank, you misunderstand me. You say "sure we'll need gigaflops, we'll
need it to do natural language and voice recognition..."

That's my whole point. We don't know how to do all that and I don't
believe (completely, trying not to be too dogmatic here) that it's the
lack of cycles that's holding us back.

I simply mean what I said. That other than the increasingly smaller
percentage of number crunchers out there (smaller because the computer
using population is growing [eg. PCs] and not in the cruncher area) we
won't have applications for the majority of users which will utilize
all those cycles (remember folks, I'm talking like 100MIPs desktops.)

To put it another way, you have no proof (not getting stuffy here)
that what's required to do natural language is more cycles. It seems
plausible, but why aren't there any good software systems running on
Crays (eg, or pick your favorite appropriate high-end box.) I'm just
saying it's not obvious the lacking thing is cycles.

Something to do with hardware innovation requiring linear effort while
software innovation requiring exponential effort, but I babble,
nothing to back that up.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University