
Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989) - gauMah
http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-and-connection-machine/
======
W0lf
This is probably the most important habit of Feynman, I tried to incorporate
into my own life and studying:

"Then he would set to work, scribbling on a pad of paper and staring at the
results. While he was in the middle of this kind of puzzle solving he was
impossible to interrupt. "Don't bug me. I'm busy," he would say without even
looking up. Eventually he would either decide the problem was too hard (in
which case he lost interest), or he would find a solution (in which case he
spent the next day or two explaining it to anyone who listened). In this way
he worked on problems in database searches, geophysical modeling, protein
folding, analyzing images, and reading insurance forms."

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JProthero
I think this sentence from the essay does a nice job of summing up Feynman's
character:

' _The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to
someone else._ '

I'd recommend Hillis' Web of Stories interview series [1] to anyone who
appreciated this piece. He shares several of the stories described in the
essay in video form (e.g. 105, 106, 119, 127 & 234), and there are plenty of
other anecdotes and insights worth listening to.

I think Hillis is pretty interesting in his own right, but he's crossed paths
with some other people in addition to Feynman that HN readers might be
interested in hearing about: Marvin Minsky, Jeff Bezos, Freeman Dyson, Steve
Jobs etc.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzo005LM6PT...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzo005LM6PTERy4uxq92sWe)

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gdubs
This is one of those ones I’ll stop and read every time it gets posted.

Bit of trivia: in the novel, “Jurassic Park”, the park’s supercomputer is a
Cray, but Spielberg picked a Connection Machine for the movie because he
thought it looked cooler.

Also, the artist Karl Sims did some outstanding work using the Connection
Machine that was mind blowing for the time, and still pretty darn cool today.
The computer itself was part of the art installation:

[https://www.karlsims.com/genetic-
images.html](https://www.karlsims.com/genetic-images.html)

~~~
f2f
This is the fat-tree connection diagram for one of the cabinets of a CM-5. It
was posted on a wall at one of the national labs in the US which had the
pleasure of working with a CM-5 around the time War Games was in theatres.
People still gushed about how nice that machine was to program 10-15 years
later. SiCortex[1] tried to do something similar with their computers,
unfortunately they failed and with them the last interesting connector
architecture and the last interesting "supercomputer". even cray does linux
now...

[http://i.imgur.com/jHtf4QB.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/jHtf4QB.jpg)

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiCortex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiCortex)

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wuschel
A very entertaining and informative essay.

Could perhaps someone try to elaborate on the calculation of buffers needed
per chip?

Quote: _To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer,
treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a
bit strange. Feynman 's router equations were in terms of variables
representing continuous quantities such as "the average number of 1 bits in a
message address." I was much more accustomed to seeing analysis in terms of
inductive proof and case analysis than taking the derivative of "the number of
1's" with respect to time._

How did he do it, conceptionally, and in practice?

~~~
aeternus
The problem sounds like it can be solved with queueing theory. The (common)
inductive proof method is covered by the wikipedia article:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory#Example_analys...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory#Example_analysis_of_an_M/M/1_queue)

However since the arrival of messages can be modeled as a probabilistic or
continuous rate, differential equations can also be used. I'm not sure if this
is how Feynman did it, but this paper shows how to model queueing using
differential equations:

[http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~rand/randpdf/ENOC2017_queueing.p...](http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~rand/randpdf/ENOC2017_queueing.pdf)

~~~
wuschel
Thanks for looking into this, and posting these directions!

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dang
Many previous threads, but not for a couple years.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Richard%20Feynman%20and%20the%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Richard%20Feynman%20and%20the%20Connection%20Machine%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

(We changed the URL above from
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070228104914/http://www.kurzwe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070228104914/http://www.kurzweilai.net:80/articles/art0504.html?printable=1))

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
I don't mind high quality content such as this being shared at regular
intervals for the sake of new readers.

~~~
dang
Yes! The purpose of posting those links is to point new readers (and old
ones!) at the earlier threads.

Just to be clear, if the repost was inappropriate we'd have marked it [dupe]
above. The rules for that are at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
Thanks for the clarification.

------
sdrothrock
I'm glad this was posted despite being perennial -- it's the first time I've
read it.

Does anyone have any similar "classic" Feynman stories to share?

~~~
yesenadam
He wrote a few books of reminiscences which are full of them, great reads.

But this was the first time I've seen his...extremely ugly sexist behaviour
displayed, not just hinted about. Very odd. In his books he's just a bit of a
ladies man.

~~~
yesenadam
What am I being downvoted for here exactly, downvoters?[0] Do people think the
behaviour mentioned is at all acceptable?! Or that 'extremely ugly sexist
behaviour' isn't a fair characterization? I can't see what else in what I said
could cause offence. We _are_ talking about Feynman, who believed in speaking
the plain truth, pretty or not. And that story is just very creepy:

"in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl
of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch
it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the
president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a
victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said."

[0] Sorry to mention it, but this doesn't seem quite the standard case.

~~~
sten
Don't leave out the rest of the quote.

>"Yes, it really annoys me," she said. "On the other hand, he is the only one
who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That
was the essence of Richard's charm.

~~~
yesenadam
I "left that out" because it reminded me of how people say "Yes, my husband
was a violent psychopath, but underneath he was a gentle, sensitive man." or
something. Being 'charming' is how sociopaths get away with it, not a
balancing, redeeming feature. So don't tell me I have to mention the
"redeeming feature", thanks.

(Besides, I thought it was strange she said "as if I could understand it", not
"in a way I could understand"...it sounded to me like she didn't understand.)

~~~
sten
Whoever this woman was, she was an engineer working at a cutting edge computer
company in the 1970s. She likely suffered ridiculous prejudices to get to the
point where she was. I'm inclined to believe that she did know (at least some)
quantum mechanics and had to put up with people treating her as if she didn't
know.

I can see how you've read the context and I think I've taken the opposite
understanding. Either way, now people who didn't read the article can see both
and decide for themselves!

~~~
yesenadam
I'm sorry I wrote the bit in parentheses as it meant you didn't respond to the
important point, the part not in parentheses. The bit about his charmingness
seemed like those justifications people give to arsehole behaviour -
sociopaths are usually charming - not an effectively "balancing", redeeming
one. Maybe you thought otherwise. And please allow me to make a point without
being told to quote some part other than what I choose to. Thanks.

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newnewpdro
Feynman is one of the few dead people I wish I could have had many
conversations with while on a long hike.

His talk describing computers to a lay audience at the Esalen Institute [1] is
my goto resource whenever someone asks me how computers work. It's from the
same era as the referenced article, he's even wearing the same Thinking
Machines shirt.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA)

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input_device
"treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system"

Any additional information on this?

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chj
Don't read to the end, it is heart breaking.

~~~
themodelplumber
It's not too bad if you have already read about Feynman's life and death. I
liked the bits about telling and teaching.

