Technological Prerequisites and Consequences of Ubiquitous Computing and Networking in Resurrecting Extinct Computers

Abstract

The passage discusses the previous days of computing, highlighting the experiment of alternative processor designs, such as the Connection Machine (CM1). The CM1 was a unique architecture consisting of 65536 individual one-bit processors interconnected as a 12dimensional hyper-cube. Despite its innovative design, the machine faced challenges and eventually faded into obscurity. To preserve this piece of computing history, efforts have been made to develop a cycle accurate simulator of the Connection-Machine and create an RTL (Register Transfer Level) hardware description of its building block chip. These preservation steps are crucial in ensuring that the legacy of the Connection Machine is not forgotten. The evaluate of the Connection Machine performance yields mixed result. While it demonstrates impressive performance on certain tasks such as a breadth first search algorithm with a remarkably low cycle-per-element ratio, its limitations become apparent in other applications, particularly those in linear algebra. Factors like the 1 bit word size and latency of messages passing impose constraints on performance, especially in traditionally parallelizable applications. Overall, the passage underscores the importance of understanding and preserving the history of computing, including the exploration of alternative architectures like the Connection Machine, despite their eventual challenges and limitations.