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Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

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Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#121

Post by vanderZwan »

garaetjjte wrote: post #66

Officials weren't keen on these bespoke machines because there was a Comecon push to standardize on unified system based on IBM 360, with compatible peripherals manufactured in many Eastern bloc countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ES_EVM K-202 was later developed into MERA 400, which was somewhat more successful. https://mera400-pl.translate.goog/Strona_g%C5%82%C3%B3wna?_x... One of interesting things from moder…

> One of interesting things from modern perspective is that these machines didn't have synchronous clocks, but cycles were timed by RC delay circuits which were tuned differently for various groups of instructions.

Between this and the GA144 I wonder if clockless architectures aren't an under-explored area, since they seem to be able to achieve a lot of performance per watt and per gate if done right

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#122

Post by qwytw »

keiferski wrote: post #102
HayBale wrote: post #4

Not that I want to be Debbie downer but as always in case of Polish (which I am also are) overexaggerated and having that strange believe that if not the communists Poland would be a global superpower. Its enough to go the wiki (both about the computer and the inventor) to see that the situation was not that clear. The performance was greatly overstated, it depended on the import of the component from the west etc. M…

I don’t think anyone believes Poland would be a global superpower. But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much any other European state, including Germany, Russia, and France. It’s not a stretch to think that Poland would be on equal terms with Spain or Italy had these things not occurred. But of course then you…

> But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much

To be fair the country become entirely dysfunctional (mainly due to internal reasons) long before it was dismembered. By the 1700s while technically retaining most of its territory it basically became just a "playground" for Russia, Swedish and German armies to fight each other in... and the country's elite had very little interest or desire to prevent that (or rather it was a very low priority for them and their weren't willing to sacrifice their economic and political status for it).

> Italy

I'm not sure Italy had many advantages in that regard. It was already dismembered to begin with and for several hundreds of years it was just a prize for major European powers to fight over (in many ways it was in even worse position than Poland). On the other hand even at its peak Poland was extremely economically and socially underdeveloped compared to most of Italy which seems like a much bigger reason.

> Germany > resources from colonies might have played a role in their industrialization.

I'm not sure that's true in this case. Yes Germans were doing a lot of "colonizing" in Eastern Europe but I'm not sure German states in Germany "proper" necessarily benefited that much from it. And to be fair historically Poland only has itself to "blame" for being outmatched by a minor state like Prussia which began as a Polish vassal but somehow managed to turn itself into a global(ish) superpower over a few centuries.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#123

Post by aleph_minus_one »

ordu wrote: post #56
cloudsec9 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If supply chain was the issue, surely they could have worked to create a more local source for things; but it seems like a flavour of corruption to use slower and inferior machines instead of trying to leverage the best of both. My feeling from the article was that he worked outside the box, and THAT was simply unacceptable to the authorities, no matter how good the underlying technology was.

> My feeling from the article was that he worked outside the box, and THAT was simply unacceptable to the authorities, no matter how good the underlying technology was. USSR had a planning economy, so they decided ahead what good and in which quantity must be produced in a coming five years. And then comes some genius and makes a computer better than planned. What should they do? Something alike was with Setun[1], th…

> USSR had a planning economy, so they decided ahead what good and in which quantity must be produced in a coming five years. And then comes some genius and makes a computer better than planned. What should they do?

They should do what most management textbooks tell you: adjust the planning to include this innovation in the plan.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#125

Post by jojobas »

defrost wrote: post #116
rapidaneurism wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of planned economies is that credit, investment, and profits are controlled by the state. In any way starting a commercial enterprise would surely mark them as capitalist class traitors, wouldn't it?

Not in the case of the planned economies of China nor the USSR (post Stalin, IIRC) nor Russia (if, indeed, there's still a plan there).

There was no starting any private enterprise in USSR until Perestroika (1988ish). Best you could do is to suggest doing something to the government and if you knew the right people you could be allowed to, given some resources etc.

Think starting a project within a large company, except you can't quit and start on your own.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#126

Post by yetihehe »

jojobas wrote: post #119
mordae wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really about communism, though. You'd have to be blind not to see parallels under capitalism. Employees cannot profit from inventions and improvements, so they don't engage in them. Improving efficiency means budget cuts and animosity from under performers. This might not be true for smallest companies, but those don't really drive the economy.

Except employees do in fact benefit from innovations and improvements, and most inventions and innovations of the past 100 years come from capitalist, not socialist, countries. To the contrary, soviet orgs paid set awards for "rationalizing suggestions", and without the market value control 99% of them were of course bullshit.

> To the contrary, soviet orgs paid set awards for "rationalizing suggestions"

Yes, but very often someone did that rationalizing suggestion and the manager got the reward. Most people suggesting improvements stopped after one small improvement when treated like that, so whole idea was doomed to fail by poor execution.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#127

Post by keiferski »

qwytw wrote: post #122
keiferski wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think anyone believes Poland would be a global superpower. But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much any other European state, including Germany, Russia, and France. It’s not a stretch to think that Poland would be on equal terms with Spain or Italy had these things not occurred. But of course then you…

> But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much To be fair the country become entirely dysfunctional (mainly due to internal reasons) long before it was dismembered. By the 1700s while technically retaining most of its territory it basically became just a "playground" for Russia, Swedish and German armies to fight…

I’m not super interested in arguing about the finer details. The point remains that Poland was colonized, destroyed, and occupied from roughly the late 19th century until the 1990s, and so anyone blaming the lack of development there on occupying forces is in a large sense correct. The fact that Poland today, unoccupied, is rapidly approaching the development level of leading EU countries further emphasizes the point.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#128

Post by 6d6b73 »

ein0p wrote: post #87
6d6b73 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war would take a different direction because it would take slightly longer for Germans to conquer the rest of Poland. That few weeks could help France and Germany to decide to actually join the war and attack Germany instead of just sitting there for months waiting for Germans to attack. The non-agression pact between Poland and Nazi Germany was signed to normalize relations between the country, and not to partit…

They wouldn’t have to “conquer” it. They’d just march straight through and end up in Ukrainian SSR and Belarus. My point is, the USSR was hardly unique in signing “intersting” pacts in late 30s, and its desire to surround itself with at least some semblance of buffer states is quite understandable given that there are, famously, no natural geographical obstacles between it and invading European hordes. And regardless…

In september there were about 300k soldiers in the parts that soviets later occupied. If you don't think that would slow Germans down you're wrong. But more importantly during the occupation Soviets killed thousands of people in Katyn and other places, and sent close to 2 mln to gulags. They stole art, books and removed machines from factories. They raped women. And they kept doing all these dispicable acts even after the war ended. There is not much difference between ethnic cleansing that Germans did, and the one did by Russians.

Poland didn't need Stalin and his murderers. Soviet Union, and mostly Russia is responsible for millions of deaths before, during and after the wars. Even 80+ years later Russians still think that killing people is a way to save them just look at what's going on in Ukraine.

Just because Soviets pushed back Germans doesn't absolve them from all the crimes they committed. Not to mention that they cooperated with Nazi before 1941. They even widened their economic cooperation in January 1941. They didn't care that Poles were being exterminated in the Nazi occupied parts. Why would they- they were doing their part to exterminate them at the same time.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#129

Post by 6d6b73 »

ein0p wrote: post #75
omega3 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With friends like this… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish...

And I’m not arguing with that, Stalin also did massive purges of his own officers, leaving the red army severely deficient right before the war, but as horrible as this is, this is not total genocide, which is what awaited Poland had the USSR not won the war.

German genocide of other nations consisted of exterminating weak people and forced labor for the strong. They integrated people with "Aryan features" into their society and we're slowly getting rid of the rest.

Soviets exterminated scientist, priests, doctors and officers - the very people who could fight back. They integrated poor and weak. Their idea was to melt the remaining people into one nation. This is a form of ethnic cleansing.

Both Nazi and Soviets had the same goal - to take over the world by killing the people they didn't like and integrating people they needed. They just had difference of opinion in show to achieve their goals. Fortunately they didn't succeed, unfortunately it still resulted in millions killed by both sides.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#130

Post by naveen99 »

ordu wrote: post #56
cloudsec9 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If supply chain was the issue, surely they could have worked to create a more local source for things; but it seems like a flavour of corruption to use slower and inferior machines instead of trying to leverage the best of both. My feeling from the article was that he worked outside the box, and THAT was simply unacceptable to the authorities, no matter how good the underlying technology was.

> My feeling from the article was that he worked outside the box, and THAT was simply unacceptable to the authorities, no matter how good the underlying technology was. USSR had a planning economy, so they decided ahead what good and in which quantity must be produced in a coming five years. And then comes some genius and makes a computer better than planned. What should they do? Something alike was with Setun[1], th…

Centralization is also fragile, a single point of failure, which fails without fail. even quantum mechanics doesn’t make a decision in advance.
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