The Connection Machine (Artificial Intelligence) [Paperback]

W. Danny Hillis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262580977 | ISBN-13: 978-0262580977 | Publication Date: February 15, 1989

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 Machine is included in the Artificial Intelligence series, edited by Patrick Winston, Michael Brady, and Daniel Bobrow.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This book is essentially an edited version of Hillis's landmark thesis describing the design and implementation of the Connection Machine (CM), a massively parallel computer. The philosophy behind the CM's design is that the right kind of machine for many important computational tasks is a machine with vast numbers of simple processors doing the same thing on different data. This notion of one processor per important data element (one processor per pixel in image processing) is inspiring.

The Connection Machine is not a textbook and may be intimidating to beginners, but it provides a wonderful picture of the kinds of issues involved in designing a new machine. The book is well written and features a host of interesting discussions by Hillis on related topics (such as general philosophy of parallel computing). Anyone interested in the subject of computer architecture will enjoy and profit greatly from this book. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"This wonderfully lucid book describes what history may judge to be the second state in the evolution of digital computers."
—Marvin Minsky, MIT



"The presentation is excellent.... As in the best of crime novels, the reader is made to become more and more curious as to how the central problem of the machine design will be solved I will refrain from giving any clues to the answer - it would spoil the suspense for future readers."
—A. M. Andrew, Robotics



"The Connection Machine will be appreciated by those who require a lucid description of a computer design that is truly ingenious."
—Igor Aleksander, Nature

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (February 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262580977
• ISBN-13: 978-0262580977
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,792,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars easy reading, good intro to massive multiprocessing, August 2, 2006

By 

Trevis Rothwell (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Connection Machine (Artificial Intelligence) (Paperback)

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.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What do you get when you connect a zillion computers togethe, November 26, 2000

By 

Howard Schneider (Thornhill, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Connection Machine (Mit Press Series in Artificial Intelligence) (Hardcover)

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Connection Machine? Count me in!, August 17, 2010

By 

n8 - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Connection Machine (Artificial Intelligence) (Paperback)

This book is great. I have loved computers for years, and this book has given me a completely different way to think about them.

Hats off to Daniel Hillis!

-n8