hillis

Yeah, data-parallel computing on a GPU doesn't really approach what Hillis was aiming for.

As explained to me by Danny Hillis in 1982-3 when he wished my company, LMI, could provide Lisp Machines for Thinking Machines, Inc.

Looks like I'm not the only one who followed this up after reading about Danny Hillis and Applied Invention today.

One serious problem with universities, and the explicit reason Danny Hillis had to create Thinking Machines to get his Connection Machine (CM, first version) developed, is that they can't pay researcher more than the pay professors.

Well, there's the first Connection Machine architecture, very roughly contemporaneous with Lisp Machines (I had to regretfully tell my friend Danny Hillis that LMI wouldn't be able to provide Lisp Machines for Thinking Machines Corporation in time (which had to be formed because the project needed 1-2 analog engineers, which MIT was structurally unable to pay, no one gets paid more than a professor).

It's comical how bad Hadoop is compared even to the CM Lisp described in Daniel Hillis' PhD dissertation.

My first favorite was Danny Hillis' story [1] about designing sorting algorithms using genetic algorithms on a massively parallel machine.

One of their projects (the brainchild of Danny Hillis) is to build a clock that will run for 10,000+ years.

Other similar (in some sense) systems include the Inmos transputer based machines such as the ParSys SuperNode and and Meiko CS-1 (and others), and Danny Hillis's Connection machines CM1 and CM2.

(It's more of a math book than a programming one, but its point is to be both.) Daniel Hillis: The Pattern on the Stone, The Connection Machine.

The long now foundation are quite an interesting bunch, known mostly for their 10,000 year clock: "The Long Now Foundation itself is the brainchild of inventor and engineer Danny Hillis, who launched the non-profit to build the clock.

(I believe Danny Hillis, the founder of Thinking Machines wrote that he would never have finished his dissertation if he hadn't written the first draft at Disney World.

The long now foundation are quite an interesting bunch, known mostly for their 10,000 year clock: "The Long Now Foundation itself is the brainchild of inventor and engineer Danny Hillis, who launched the non-profit to build the clock.

It's comical how bad Hadoop is compared even to the CM Lisp described in Daniel Hillis' PhD dissertation.

My first favorite was Danny Hillis' story [1] about designing sorting algorithms using genetic algorithms on a massively parallel machine.

One of their projects (the brainchild of Danny Hillis) is to build a clock that will run for 10,000+ years.