Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Tag: ILLIAC IV
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Lessons from a Young Department Head
N.B. You might want to grab a libation before reading. This is a long post. What does a young researcher do when he is suddenly thrust into leading a top-tier computer science department? He learns to fix problems before others see them, outwit university bureaucracy, make decisions that can change people’s lives, and protect the…
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Stored Program Computing: Ideas and Individuals Do Change the World
Johnny von Neumann’s draft report on EDVAC and the stored program concept transformed and codified modern digital computing
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Simple HPC Wins – Usually
You want to be the first person to design a successful, transistorized computer system, not the last person to design vacuum tube computer. As I frequently told my graduate students at Illinois, the great thing about parallel computing is the question never changes – “How can I increase performance?” – but the answers do. Babbage…
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Luck Is a Fickle Friend
As an enterprising young faculty member, I asked Professor Slotnick if he had any words of wisdom to offer a young parallel computing researcher, based on his experience with ILLIAC IV. He simply said, “Choose your risks carefully.”