fostel@ncsu.UUCP (09/19/83)
Sheesh. Every seems so excited about whether a parallel machine is or
will lead to fundamentally new things. I agree with someones comment
that conceptually time-sharing and multi-programming have been conceptually
quite parellel "virtual" machines for some time. Just more and cheaper of
the same. Perhaps the added availability will lead someone to have a good
idea or two about how to do something better -- in that sense it seems
certain that something good will come of proliferation and popularization
of parallelism. But for my money, there is nothing really, fundamentally
different.
Unless it is non-determinism. Parallel system tend to be less deterministic
then their simplex brethern, though vast effort are usually expended in an
effort to stamp out this property. Take me for example: I am VERY non-
deterministic (just ask my wife) and yet I am also smarter then a lot of
AI programs. The break thru in AI/Arch will, in my non-determined opinion,
come when people stop trying to sqeeze paralle systems into the more
restricted modes of simplex systems, and develop new paradigms for how
to let such a system spred its wings in a dimension OTHER THAN performance.
From a pragmatic view, I think this will not happen until people take
error recovery and exception processing more seriously, since there is a
fine line between an error and a new thought ....
----GaryFostel----