X-Message-Number: 12926
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Why I'm glad but unimpressed by the IBM computer
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 18:38:21 +1100 (EST)

For John K Clark:

You may not know this but my personal involvement with computers has been
with parallel computers. When I went back to the US in 1985 from Australia
I got a job with a company making a new parallel computer, and my other
work was of the same kind.

While the new IBM computer looks as if it will be larger than others, and
therefore capable of more and faster work, this isn't in itself all that
important. Was I disappointed? No, not at all. It's one more use of
parallelism on a problem which needs it badly. I may have felt less
IMPRESSED than others because increasing the number of processors isn't
a major problem in the kind of computer IBM is making. It's just a matter
of whether the necessary money is there. Fine. It was there.

Since our brain, too, is a parallel computer (of a different kind) I've
felt for a long time that students of computer science should become 
acquainted with parallelism as soon as possible. It's not something to be
thought about and done only by professsors and grad students. But that's
a separate issue.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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