Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
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Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#2Amazing!, very good Feynman story that I didn't know. I love how Feynman accepted those challenging problems.
Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#3I never can get enough stories about Richard Feynman. I thought I'd heard them all, but somehow I missed this one. It's well written and captures many of the things he worked on later in his life; not to mention it's a really cool article about the beginnings of a rather ambitious project to make a parallel computer in the early 1980s.
Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#4Favorite part:
"Since the only computer language Richard was really familiar with was Basic, he made up a parallel version of Basic in which he wrote the program and then simulated it by hand to estimate how fast it would run on the Connection Machine."
Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#5This article was from the Physics Today memorial issue on Feynman iirc. When I read it at the time, I seem to remember that it was also the weakest article in that issue. (It was before Thinking Machines crashed and burned.)
Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#6[deleted]
Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#7I took Alan Edelman's 18.337 class (Parallel Supercomputing) at MIT a few years ago, and on the first day he brought in some boards that had been used in the original Connection Machine - it was like looking into a piece of living history to see circuits that had been influenced by Feynman. Fantastic article!
Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#8[deleted]
Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#9Favorite part: "Since the only computer language Richard was really familiar with was Basic, he made up a parallel version of Basic in which he wrote the program and then simulated it by hand to estimate how fast it would run on the Connection Machine."
I would've hoped someone of Feynman's level would've easily picked up a better language.
Re: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine (1989)
#10Favorite part: "Since the only computer language Richard was really familiar with was Basic, he made up a parallel version of Basic in which he wrote the program and then simulated it by hand to estimate how fast it would run on the Connection Machine."
I would've hoped someone of Feynman's level would've easily picked up a better language.
Someone like Feynman is capable of inventing a new language for parallel computing and correctly simulating its execution by hand.
That's a much more impressive skill than just learning another language.