modlin at concentric.net wrote:
> In the sense that you seem to mean it, your statement that hardware
> design is critical is wrong.
>> Hardware design is important in a lot of practical ways. A design must
> provide devices and channels for information to come into the system and
> out of it... sensors and effectors, in biological or robotic terms.
> Hardware design also determines how fast computations can proceed, and
> how much information can be stored and manipulated... all very important
> to the practicality of solving any particular computational problem.
>> But hardware design has absolutely nothing to do with the kinds of
> things that can be computed, given that we are comparing designs that
> are capable of elementary computation at all. Anything any computing
> machine can do, all computing machines can do, given enough time and
> physical capacity. Architecture affects practical issues of
> performance, but makes absolutely no difference to what is possible if
> we provide enough capacity and don't care how long it takes.
>> The difference between any computing machine and any other computing
> machine is only a matter of programming. A finite program running on
> either of the machines would suffice to emulate the operation of the
> other, so that exactly the same programs could run on either one.
>> Bill Modlin
Sorry Bill, I gotta disagree here. Beyond the issue of data size and cpapcity of a
particular arch, the computer that is my brain operates in fundementally different ways than
the computer that I'm typing this reply on. My brain is *not* a number cruncher, and does
such tasks extremely poorly and slowly, if at all. There are some calculations which, not
matter how much time was involved, a human computer could not do - take a look at some of
the weather data processing going on now, or calculations involving various quantum effects
over a large system. Conversely, there are things I can do that you cannot teach an
existing electronic computer to do (such as understand plain English and respond in an
intelligent (OK, a topical) fashion).
The difference, I believe, is architecture. My brain is organized in a fundementally
different way from any current computer system. It is not a single processor, or even a
multi-processor machine such as a Cray or and Origin. It is a system of billions
(trillions?) of nodes which interconnect in many different ways, and it is through the
interaction of nodes, not the processing of the nodes themselves, that brain function
occurs, IMO.
Cheers,
lyle
--
Sincerely,
Lyle W. Bateman
System Consultant
PECC Ltd.
NOTE: My views are my own, and do not represent the views
of my employer, unless explicitly stated.
