

The computer that can’t crash - leojkent
http://www.humansinvent.com/#!/11109/the-computer-that-cant-crash/

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colanderman
_So that’s why, if one of them locks up or freezes, your whole computer can
crash because it’s not actually doing things in parallel._

What utter BS. Does this guy know nothing about privilege levels [1]? or
anything about operating system and processor development from the past 20
years?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilege_level>

~~~
pessimizer
>What utter BS.

What silly outrage. That explanation is _so_ close enough for an audience full
of laypeople.

~~~
colanderman
It's a lie (intentional or not), and one that does the author a disservice by
(a) making him look like a fool to his peers, and (b) obfuscating the _actual_
benefits of his computing model (which, from the paper, look to have more to
do increasing performance of certain parallel algorithms rather than fault-
tolerance).

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ffk
This article makes it sounds like he is applying a microkernel with user space
modules to multi-processor systems.

New scientist article on this has better info. Data and instructions are
packaged together, are passed around, and executed with a pseudo-random timer
offsetting a unit of work to avoid a single thread over consuming resources.
They also want to apply machine learning to have certain error conditions self
repair through auto code manipulation.

Here's a much better article on the topic:

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729045.400-the-
compu...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729045.400-the-computer-
that-never-crashes.html)

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ggchappell
Here is a paper of Bentley's that appears to be talking about the idea
mentioned in the article:

<http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/p.bentley/SABEC2.pdf>

He has written other relevant stuff, but publicly available full-text versions
are hard to find. For those who want to search, the key phrase seems to be
"systemic computation".

And just in case it isn't clear: this is front-line research. There is no
_product_ to get the technical specs of.

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davidw
Looks interesting, but it'd be nice to get the detailed, technical description
of it, rather than some journalist's take on things.

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guard-of-terra
That kind of computer will also make subtle and unpredictable mistakes.

Compared to a system which either gets it completely right or it doesn't.

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jere
_The computer that can't get stuck in an infinite loop._

I don't think that is necessarily the same as one that can't crash.

~~~
delinka
It's not at all the same.

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louthy
"Humans Invent does not support your browser as it is many years old- continue
at your own risk!

Please consider upgrading to one of the following more modern browsers: \-
Google Chrome \- Mozilla Firefox \- Apple Safari \- Internet Explorer 9"

I'm using IE10. Sterling effort there. If you can't even get your website to
work, what hope is there for computers that don't crash?

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taintlove
Whenever I hear about something like this (eg, 'the uncrashable computer' or
the 'indestructible drinking glass') it begs the question - what about one of
the greatest misnomers of all? The Unsinkable Ship, her royal majesty's
Titanic

~~~
louthy
George V was on the throne then. So if it were a royal ship, which it wasn't,
then it would be _his_ majesty's ship Titanic (HMS Titanic).

The prefix RMS which was used for the Titanic means Royal Mail Ship. i.e. it
delivered mail.

</pedant>

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ultramundane8
Holy yellow bar. Couldn't read.

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sshaginyan
So all this guy is doing is cluster computing on a micro scale?

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monochromatic
The article that can't give any details or make any sense.

