Abstract

Back in the 1980s, parallel-computing pioneer Gene Amdahl hatched a plan to speed mainframe computing: a silicon-wafer-size processor. By keeping most of the movement of data on the processor itself, computing would be faster and more energy efficient. With US $230 million from venture capitalists, the most ever at the time, Amdahl founded Trilogy Systems to make his vision a reality. This first commercial attempt at “wafer-scale integration” was such a disaster that it reportedly introduced the verb “to crater” into the financial press lexicon. Engineers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at the University of California, Los Angeles, think it's time for another go.

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