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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12926