
Thinking Machines - prakash
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Thinking-Machines.aspx
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DaniFong
'Its baffling inability to do floating point calculations...'

Not so.

From Dr. Dobb's interview with Guy Steele
([http://www.ddj.com/java/184406029;jsessionid=S1LAIUWHYHNYGQS...](http://www.ddj.com/java/184406029;jsessionid=S1LAIUWHYHNYGQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN?_requestid=127429)):

Steele: I scribbled calculations on the back of an envelope. Okay, suppose you
did the arithmetic bit serially, like the PDP-8S? A 32-bit floating-point
multiply you have to multiply two 24-bit significands, that's going to take
600 time steps. For the additions, a logarithmic number of shifts, each will
take 24 time steps...It turned out that a floating-point add would take about
1/2 a millisecond and a multiply a millisecond. Sounds terrible, but you've
got 64,000 processors.

Dr Dobb's Journal: So you could do 64,000 of these calculations in a
millisecond.

Steele: That's up in the range of 100 million operations a second, equivalent
to a Cray 1, which was the supercomputer of the day. So after the lecture, I
went up to Danny and said, "You said this is a terrible numeric machine, but I
can tell it's approximately the equivalent of a Cray 1." And he replied, "Can
we have dinner tonight?"

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demallien
That's a fascinating interview that you have linked to. Way more interesting
than the original article.

~~~
DaniFong
Yes, Steele is quite a character. I've been starting to get quite interested
in Fortress as a language. I am thinking of becoming an active participant.

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mynameishere
_we wanted a dream we weren't going to outgrow_

Ah, good line. I want such a dream.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Browning got there first: _"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or
what's a heaven for?"_

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billroberts
When I was studying for my PhD in Edinburgh around 1990/91, the group I was
working with (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) bought a Connection
Machine. Alas it was just being set up when I finished, so I never spent any
time on it. So Thinking Machines had at least one customer!

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nazgulnarsil
I hate people who waste money so lavishly.

i guess its easy come easy go.

