
On the Design of Display Processors (1968) [pdf] - jmount
http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer-sutherland-design-of-display-processors.pdf
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jmount
I absolutely love the original analysis (which is why I shared it).

The hardware version: anything capable of general purpose work is too
important to use- so you delegate to specialized hardware. That hardware then
evolves the capability to do general work and therefore becomes itself too
valuable to use.

The software version: Domain Specific Languages, Remote Procedure Call, and
many others.

Current graphics ideas: shaders, CUDA, and so on.

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mikeash
It's interesting how something like the opposite ended up happening.
Microprocessors became so cheap that they're used in almost everything. In
theory, your keyboard and monitor can do general work, if you update their
firmware to tell them what to do. Even my (electric) toothbrush contains a
microprocessor.

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mmastrac
The conclusion is amusing in retrospect (obviously things have changed since
then!):

"The view suggested by Daniel Bobrow that the display processor need not,
indeed should not, contain mere general purpose computing power, largely
determined the design of our display processor."

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jebblue
Some days it seems the best parts of the computer revolution are over; other
days it seems it's only just begun.

