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From: tpmsph@ecsvax.UUCP (Thomas P. Morris)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Processing
Message-ID: <2931@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 18-Apr-87 10:22:46 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2931
Posted: Sat Apr 18 10:22:46 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 14:39:19 EST
References: <505@sw1e.UUCP> <110@hippo.UUCP> <6123@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <6654@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 15
Summary: NLP, MIPS, Megs, and cost-effectivenes

In article <6654@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
> 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.

Barry, not being an expert on Natural Language Processing or Voice Recognition,
I agree that it _may_ not be the lack of cycles (or memory, for that matter) 
which is holding back these technologies. However, it wouldn't seem very cost-
effective to even do research on these topics using a Cray, or any other 
favorite high-end box (perhaps a Connection Machine? ;-)). To make the 
_software technology_  widely available, I'd think that a desk-top 100MIP,
4Gb machine (say, $10K, 5yrs from now :-> ) would make the research and the 
realization of these technologies more cost effective.