The Connection Machine

by W. Daniel Hillis, W.E. Hillis, William Daniel Hillis

Book Overview

The Connection Machine describes a fundamentally different kind of computer. It offers a preview of a parallel processing computer that Daniel Hillis and others are now developing to perform tasks that no conventional, sequential machine can solve in a reasonable time. W. Daniel Hillis is a founder of Thinking Machines Corporation where he is engaged in building connection machines as a significant step toward real thinking machines. The Connection...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262081571
• ISBN13: 9780262081573
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

easy reading, good intro to massive multiprocessing

Especially given that this book is in fact a doctoral dissertation, it's extremely easy to read. This is not to say that it is written for children, but rather, the author has used language well to convey concepts rather than to confuse and sound stuffy. The book states the limitations of the traditional Von Neumann computer architecture (which by and large we are still stuck with today) and then goes on to explain how an entirely different approach with many processors could work.

What do you get when you connect a zillion computers togethe

This reference describes a computer architecture containing thousands of processor/memory cells that can be connected together by software, and the rational behind this architecture. It is easy to read, and is useful in providing the general reader with a feel for large multiple processor computation, in particular an architecture well suited for semantic network marker propagation.