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From: jaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods)
Newsgroups: net.rumor,net.chess,net.arch
Subject: Ballistic transistors, the Belle II chess machine, & Seymour Cray
Message-ID: <862@ames.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Mar-85 23:08:58 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.862
Posted: Sat Mar  9 23:08:58 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Mar-85 08:13:24 EST
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Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
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# Snuff epigrams.

     The first major application of ballistic transistor technology
is the Belle II project at Murray Hill.  Since K. Thompson discovered
that each speed doubling of the standard alpha-beta chess machine adds
70-100 rating points, Bobby Fisher, last seen at 2800+, has been hired on
retainer to check out the playing strength of the new VLSI machine.
The claim for the $100,000 Friedkin prize is not far off, making the
recent Karpov-Kasparov battle pale in comparison.  Word has it that the
high-level evaluation function has been converted in the last few months
to use the new Karmarkar linear programming algorithm.

     Of course, the ballistic gate speeds (100 femtosecond range) combine with
a sub-picosecond cycle time and the speed of light to require a single-chip
implementation.  Where this design dedicates much RAM to transposition table
lookup, another research group is implementing a general purpose CPU,
the speed of which (no messy parallelism for the first go) has obvious
consequences for the future national GNP.  (The Japanese have their own HEMT
[High Electron Mobility Transistor] program.)

     In fact, Seymour Cray, long disassociated from Cray Research
(viz. recent Fortune magazine piece) flew in several weeks ago to aid in
this effort.  Heretofore, he was slaving away at a "slow" gallium arsenide
version of a breadbox-sized Cray 3.

     The importance of these events cannot be overstressed in the wake
of a failed attempt by the DOD to impose national security restrictions.
Comments about "the book being thrown out" which were originally
stifled by Nobel winner and lab chief Arno Penzias have leaked out
to not only the technical community but to the general press.  However,
what is too late for executive level intervention is not too late to
affect the price of AT&T's stock.  Curiously, it has remained stable
because Wall Street analysts see product development as too "blue sky".

    -- James A. Woods   {research,ihnp4,hplabs}!ames!jaw  (or, jaw@riacs)

P.S.
     Little known anecdotes about Seymour Cray Dept.:  not only does he
build a new type of sailboat every year before setting it afire (!!) on Lake
Michigan, but he is the constructor of the world's largest boomerang
(300 lbs. plus), the problem here being that there is no one strong enough
to test out its aerodynamics!