What is the Parallax view on Humanoido's contraptions, such as his 40-Prop SkyScraper Computing Machine?
I'm guessing the official position is something like this:
The more Prop chips that anybody buys, whether to build supercomputers or skyscrapers or brick walls against which to beat their heads, the cheaper those chips get for everyone else.
Enthusiasm should always be rewarded. I find it sad and very disturbing when it's ridiculed. Then again, I'm a glass half full kind of person.
I agree that far fetched ideas should be tempered with reality, and that offers should be made on how to achieve the goal and if not how to narrow the goal to bite sized chunks. That's standard engineering and project management.
In Humanoido's case he's certainly bubbling over with enthusiasm. He's indicated that he's been doing flea market sales, and getting investors on board to help him raise the money to do what he's doing. That should be congratulated and rewarded. He has very big ideas that should be guided, and as Ken has indicated should be moved to another part of the forum, I though the Sandbox may be better places for these kind of discussions.
Now I do note there are some attempts of humor in Humanoido's and others threads. Be warned, humor is difficult in any text only media to achieve, it's often misunderstood and is likely to be misunderstood and likely to recieve an incorrect response. I often misread what's attempted to be humor and just give up on the thread as it's hard to tell where the person is serious verses humorous. It may be a good rule not to mix humor and serious text together or to at least italize humour or end it with a wink ;-) or some way of ensuring the reader is not confused.
Humanoido I love your enthusiasm, but I'm seriously confused in a number of your post of whether you are serious or humorous. In my opinion, if you want to be taken seriously then please keep to just serious content in your posts. If you are writing fiction "creative writing" or humorous writing then please leave those in the Sandbox.
If this Super Computer thread is serious, then please read up on massively parallel computers and companies in the past like MASPAR, TRANSPUTER, etc. and try to understand how their machines operated. When you do you'll find that the hardware is a very small part of the solution to the problem. Just grabing chips and putting them on a board won't make a massively parallel super computer. Sure you may be able to get them to crunch an algorithm to indicate some number of Flops/MFlops, whatever, but it's only a dedicated machine to that particular computing task. And I think this is what most folks have a problem with. This is not simple. Many corporations have started and failed to do what you are attempting.
In the past, when I was much younger I considered making a super computer from scratch, designing it in AHPL methodology, acquiring and building it from wirewrapped ECL, building it as water cooled environment. Then designing a boot loader, then an OS, writing the shims etc to an existing programming language. Nice thought project, interesting to think about it. But practially you'd be looking at hundreds of thousands if not millions of man hours to get an error free working device, for no real market and eventually be shelved and the parts be put in yet another box in the shed. I think all of the old timers in this forum will have boxes of old shelved projects in their shed/attic/garage/basement. Parallax could have a whole forum on these, it would make a nice sandbox discussion :-)
If you are serious, then I'd suggest setting up your own blog somewhere, and send everyone a pointer to the work in progress. If you are serious, then I wish you luck, but please do your research before spending a bunch of money on building such a machine, your likely to build a shelved project (I think all of us have done this in the past).
But if you really want to be taken seriously, try starting with bite sized projects, ie. Propeller Sine Wave generator in the Audio range. Then turn it into a DTMF generator (believe me folks would celebrate if you built a repeatable object for these). Etc. This is more the challenge this forum takes seriously.
Please keep up with the enthusiasm! But don't mix humor and serious comments as you'll lose your audience.
Zoopy, your comment was just the response this thread needed.
+1
@Humanoido,
While your setup has the potential to crush a sizeable chunk of data, as many have pointed out before, even single units of the top tier modern CPUs can in most cases outperform what you have built.
That's not to say that there isn't much you can learn from your rig. And if the propeller platform just happens to be the processor that you feel the most comfortable working with, then for educational purposes, your approach is fine. The most important step now is to develop the software to make use of what you built, which is certainly the most difficult part. With lots of dedication, you might just one day develop an undiscovered, and important software implementation.
It is not a project announcement. Claims are intentionally grossly exaggerated beyond belief to obviate humor. At the DC during break we enjoy light humor about our design work - it breaks the ice, is relaxing, and it makes the day more interesting. Many ideas are born at these sessions and problems are solved. This is simply a light humor satire to serve as a relaxing diversion for those who are doing intense propeller design work. This appears to have led to an unintentional opposite effect, a kind of "Orson Welles War of the Worlds." I thought everyone would get it. My bad.
Note: just above the "Questionable Specs," in the original post, you will see the disclaimer: "Comments are welcome as the design is in its early pie-in-the-sky and tongue-in-cheek stages." A more obvious disclaimer is now at the top of the post.
The picture of Dr. Strangelove really busted me up! Like all of Electric Aye's masterpieces, the caption and the context contribute greatly to the genius of it.
If you ever have a bad day and need something to laugh about, just look up some of his past posts.
Come on, admit it! You can't resist a 'Humanoido' post. This thread has generated 38 replies and over a thousand views in 4 days. That's tough to beat especially when the post seemed so...well, silly. I have no interest in a Propeller supercomputer but I had to find out what all the fuss was about. I have to smile when I see the effect Humanoido has on people.
@Ken: Will blogging be possible for everyone? I have a Laser Tag project. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to make cases for the gun and chest plates, but most of it is done.
Comments
I'm guessing the official position is something like this:
The more Prop chips that anybody buys, whether to build supercomputers or skyscrapers or brick walls against which to beat their heads, the cheaper those chips get for everyone else.
So rock on, dude.
I agree that far fetched ideas should be tempered with reality, and that offers should be made on how to achieve the goal and if not how to narrow the goal to bite sized chunks. That's standard engineering and project management.
In Humanoido's case he's certainly bubbling over with enthusiasm. He's indicated that he's been doing flea market sales, and getting investors on board to help him raise the money to do what he's doing. That should be congratulated and rewarded. He has very big ideas that should be guided, and as Ken has indicated should be moved to another part of the forum, I though the Sandbox may be better places for these kind of discussions.
Now I do note there are some attempts of humor in Humanoido's and others threads. Be warned, humor is difficult in any text only media to achieve, it's often misunderstood and is likely to be misunderstood and likely to recieve an incorrect response. I often misread what's attempted to be humor and just give up on the thread as it's hard to tell where the person is serious verses humorous. It may be a good rule not to mix humor and serious text together or to at least italize humour or end it with a wink ;-) or some way of ensuring the reader is not confused.
Humanoido I love your enthusiasm, but I'm seriously confused in a number of your post of whether you are serious or humorous. In my opinion, if you want to be taken seriously then please keep to just serious content in your posts. If you are writing fiction "creative writing" or humorous writing then please leave those in the Sandbox.
If this Super Computer thread is serious, then please read up on massively parallel computers and companies in the past like MASPAR, TRANSPUTER, etc. and try to understand how their machines operated. When you do you'll find that the hardware is a very small part of the solution to the problem. Just grabing chips and putting them on a board won't make a massively parallel super computer. Sure you may be able to get them to crunch an algorithm to indicate some number of Flops/MFlops, whatever, but it's only a dedicated machine to that particular computing task. And I think this is what most folks have a problem with. This is not simple. Many corporations have started and failed to do what you are attempting.
In the past, when I was much younger I considered making a super computer from scratch, designing it in AHPL methodology, acquiring and building it from wirewrapped ECL, building it as water cooled environment. Then designing a boot loader, then an OS, writing the shims etc to an existing programming language. Nice thought project, interesting to think about it. But practially you'd be looking at hundreds of thousands if not millions of man hours to get an error free working device, for no real market and eventually be shelved and the parts be put in yet another box in the shed. I think all of the old timers in this forum will have boxes of old shelved projects in their shed/attic/garage/basement. Parallax could have a whole forum on these, it would make a nice sandbox discussion :-)
If you are serious, then I'd suggest setting up your own blog somewhere, and send everyone a pointer to the work in progress. If you are serious, then I wish you luck, but please do your research before spending a bunch of money on building such a machine, your likely to build a shelved project (I think all of us have done this in the past).
But if you really want to be taken seriously, try starting with bite sized projects, ie. Propeller Sine Wave generator in the Audio range. Then turn it into a DTMF generator (believe me folks would celebrate if you built a repeatable object for these). Etc. This is more the challenge this forum takes seriously.
Please keep up with the enthusiasm! But don't mix humor and serious comments as you'll lose your audience.
"Who loves ya, baby!"
(and mini-Telly does too.)
|
V
+1
@Humanoido,
While your setup has the potential to crush a sizeable chunk of data, as many have pointed out before, even single units of the top tier modern CPUs can in most cases outperform what you have built.
That's not to say that there isn't much you can learn from your rig. And if the propeller platform just happens to be the processor that you feel the most comfortable working with, then for educational purposes, your approach is fine. The most important step now is to develop the software to make use of what you built, which is certainly the most difficult part. With lots of dedication, you might just one day develop an undiscovered, and important software implementation.
Note: just above the "Questionable Specs," in the original post, you will see the disclaimer: "Comments are welcome as the design is in its early pie-in-the-sky and tongue-in-cheek stages." A more obvious disclaimer is now at the top of the post.
If you ever have a bad day and need something to laugh about, just look up some of his past posts.