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From: webber@klinzhai.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Processing
Message-ID: <177@brandx.klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sat, 18-Apr-87 23:27:58 EST
Article-I.D.: brandx.177
Posted: Sat Apr 18 23:27:58 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 11:56:09 EST
References: <505@sw1e.UUCP> <110@hippo.UUCP> <6123@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <6741@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 59
Summary: plenty of uses for a personal cray

In article <6741@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
> 	3. Possibly more in the realm of other technologies, although
> 	in the right ball-park (eg. scanning huge data bases requires
> 	fast I/O as much if not more than CPU power, large numbers of
> 	cooperating CPUs might be more useful in such an endeavor
> 	than single massive CPUs, similar argument for image processing.)
> 	The problem, of course, is that we don't know how to use multiple
> 	CPU systems very well, so we go for the iron.

There is plenty of parallelism in a single cpu, `wires' wait for no
one :-) .  Off board is always slower than on board -- off chip slower
than on chip.  If cpu's were fast enough, one would probably want to
start using smarter management of the interchip communication channels.

> My contention is simply that sheer CPU power has become vastly
> over-rated as a cure-all, and people are starting to realize this.
> 
> Again, I am speaking for the vast majority of the users of computers,
> I fully accept there is a small percentage for whom no iron will be
> fast enough in the foreseeable future. I also do not think we have
> reached a plateau quite yet, but we are rapidly approaching some point
> where further increases (for most users) will be superfluous w/o
> significant software and other technolgy advances, maybe not even then.

Well, computers in general are irrelevant to most of humanity.
However, fast cpu's can offer things of interest to the non-computer
specialist.  For example, current computer chess games are really bad
in the endgame -- there is a fair amount of indication that fast hardware
helps more than clever programming (although maybe no one has been clever
enough yet :-).  Fast cpu's could generate interactive universes --
roaming around in high-dimensional surface graphs would give much
insight into the models of scientists and engineers.  If cpu's were
fast enough, everything you sent to disk could go encrypted -- adding
significantly to the overall security of computer users (of course,
fast cpu's will weaken the security of slow cpu users -- which sounds
like a classic example of a market bootstrapping itself).  Faster
cpu's should mean greater reliability as things like array-bounds and
pointer types can get checked at execution time.  Fast cpu's can run
algorithms to squeeze the maximum bandwidth out of slow i/o channels.

Of course, people who like to manipulate computers directly will win
even bigger.  How would you like your compiler to be able to run
global error correction algorithms instead of local algorithms that go
crazy after the first 4 errors?  How would you like to be able to use
arbitrary context-free grammars to parse your favourite personal
language rather than have to squeeze everything into LALR(1)?  How
would you like to have the computer manipulate numbers as flexibly as
you do by hand (64bit arithmetic? -- give me bignums -- roundoff
errors are a pain)?  How about cpu's fast enough to allow your screen editor 
to compute the optimal update to your terminal screen? or fast enough
to globably anti-alias output on your graphics device?  How would you
like your computer to be fast enough that your could run extensive code
optimization algorithms that generate code fast enough so that on your
machine it runs fast enough to allow you to run extensive code
optimization algorithms ...

Well there is much more, but I think you get the idea.

--------------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ;  BACKBONE!topaz!webber)