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DIY 1980s "Non-Von" Supercomputer
Brietech writes "Ever wanted to own your own supercomputer? This guy recreated a 31-processor SIMD supercomputer from the early 1980s called the 'Non-Von 1' in an FPGA. It uses a 'Non-Von Neumann' architecture, and was intended for extremely fast database searches and artificial intelligence applications. Full-scale models were intended to have more than a million processors. It's a cool project for those interested in 'alternative' computer architectures, and yes, full source code (Verilog) is available, along with a python library to program it with." Hope the WIPO patent has expired.
So, that's neat and all but did I misunderstand something. His model doesn't seem that powerful unless he was using modern processors?
Bored at work? Play Game!
Still not.
Who the hell modded the parent insightful? To the parent: call me when you ever do anything except post here.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm not imagining anything. I'm KNOWING you're the kind of asshole who posts on every Slashdot article about someone's homebrew project whining that it isn't "useful" in some arbitrary utilitarian sense and therefore is pointless. I'm knowing you do this, because like the others you have no imagination, no desire to learn, and no empathy with those who do.
Oh, and it was you who raised Linux, in what appeared to be some kind of ironic "You're criticizing me, but I run Linux! Linux I tell you! Therefore I am cool!" defense against the suggestion you might actually be a wannabe geek. You do know that Linux wasn't utilitarian once too, right?
No, you're not cool. You're an ass.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
One of my classmates was a Masspar founder. In the 1980s it readily doable for a 2 to 5 person team to design a custom CPU with the new Mead-Conway type circuit compilers and Silicon-fab factories out there. Lots of clever ideas too. Plus UNIX (before Linux) was a low cost way of porting an operating system that customer scientists were familar with. They all claimed C-compilers that made porting code easy. NOT! I put energy industry code on a half-dozen of them.
The problems was the second generation machine. The prototypes got out the door, but only found a handful of customers - usually bold geeks. The second generation CMs, MassPars, Convexes, etc. then took 3-5 years. In the meantime that was about 3 to 5 Intel commodity chip generations which caught up in the meantime.
The 1990s were expandable commodity clusters. Several of my friends started software services companies in their garages with a few dozen nodes, then expanded as business grew. Several cashed out very well. The 1990s approach made economic sense, but the 1980s were more intellectually interesting.
And I could buy a chair from WalMart, but I get more satisfaction out of building one.
With that attitude and week-old UID, its no wonder America is suffering in science and engineering.