A Piece of Pie for You Slackers
Don't become bored and fail to read this from start to finish. Keep the thought in your mind, as you read, intelligent design or random chance. Can the Hand of God be discerned moving through a string of transcendental numbers racing to infinity and beyond? I encountered so many fascinating points to ponder in this article I do not know where to start. I was very immersed in being awed by the technology discussed in this article. Then I came to understand that the article had been written in the early 1990s. I think I may have fallen somewhat behind in my technical knowledge. There is a discussion of mathematics, language, and randomness, toward the end of the piece, that will bring to mind the Bible Code. This is a fascinating read about eccentric people, supercomputers and our very small place in the realms of infinity.
The Mountains of Pi
by Richard Preston
Gregory Volfovich Chudnovsky recently built a supercomputer in his apartment from mail-order parts. Gregory Chudnovsky is a number theorist. His apartment is situated near the top floor of a run-down building on the West Side of Manhattan, in a neighborhood near Columbia University. Not long ago, a human corpse was found dumped at the end of the block. The world's most powerful supercomputers include the Cray Y-MP C90, the Thinking Machines CM-5, the Hitachi S-820/80, the nCube, the Fujitsu parallel machine, the Kendall Square Research parallel machine, the NEC SX-3, the Touchstone Delta, and Gregory Chudnovsky's apartment. The apartment seems to be a kind of container for the supercomputer at least as much as it is a container for people.
Gregory Chudnovsky's partner in the design and construction of the supercomputer was his older brother, David Volfovich Chudnovsky, who is also a mathematician, and who lives five blocks away from Gregory. The Chudnovsky brothers call their machine m zero. It occupies the former living room of Gregory's-apartment, and its tentacles reach into other rooms. The brothers claim that m zero is a "true, general-purpose supercomputer," and that it is as fast and powerful as a somewhat older Cray Y-MP, but it is not as fast as the latest of the Y-MP machines, the C90, an advanced supercomputer made by Cray Research. A Cray Y-MP C90 costs more than thirty million dollars. It is a black monolith, seven feet tall and eight feet across, in the shape of a squat cylinder, and is cooled by liquid freon. So far, the brothers have spent around seventy thousand dollars on parts for their supercomputer, and much of the money has come out of their wives' pockets.
The Mountains of Pi
by Richard Preston
Gregory Volfovich Chudnovsky recently built a supercomputer in his apartment from mail-order parts. Gregory Chudnovsky is a number theorist. His apartment is situated near the top floor of a run-down building on the West Side of Manhattan, in a neighborhood near Columbia University. Not long ago, a human corpse was found dumped at the end of the block. The world's most powerful supercomputers include the Cray Y-MP C90, the Thinking Machines CM-5, the Hitachi S-820/80, the nCube, the Fujitsu parallel machine, the Kendall Square Research parallel machine, the NEC SX-3, the Touchstone Delta, and Gregory Chudnovsky's apartment. The apartment seems to be a kind of container for the supercomputer at least as much as it is a container for people.
Gregory Chudnovsky's partner in the design and construction of the supercomputer was his older brother, David Volfovich Chudnovsky, who is also a mathematician, and who lives five blocks away from Gregory. The Chudnovsky brothers call their machine m zero. It occupies the former living room of Gregory's-apartment, and its tentacles reach into other rooms. The brothers claim that m zero is a "true, general-purpose supercomputer," and that it is as fast and powerful as a somewhat older Cray Y-MP, but it is not as fast as the latest of the Y-MP machines, the C90, an advanced supercomputer made by Cray Research. A Cray Y-MP C90 costs more than thirty million dollars. It is a black monolith, seven feet tall and eight feet across, in the shape of a squat cylinder, and is cooled by liquid freon. So far, the brothers have spent around seventy thousand dollars on parts for their supercomputer, and much of the money has come out of their wives' pockets.
posted by BigBubba at 8:26 PM
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2 Comments:
Great article...
"I suspect that in their hearts most working mathematicians are Platonists, in that they take it as a matter of unassailable if unprovable fact that mathematical reality stands apart from the world, and is at least as REAL as the world, and possibly gives shape to the world, as Plato suggested."
Pi - a ratio of two opposites, the perfectly curved and the perfectly straight. Almost sounds like a ratio between justice and truth. Some people might call it a "harmony".
-FJ
Plato, "Theaetetus" (on Creationism)
STRANGER: In the first place, there are two kinds of creation.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: One of them is human and the other divine.
THEAETETUS: I do not follow.
STRANGER: Every power, as you may remember our saying originally, which causes things to exist, not previously existing, was defined by us as creative.
THEAETETUS: I remember.
STRANGER: Looking, now, at the world and all the animals and plants, at things which grow upon the earth from seeds and roots, as well as at inanimate substances which are formed within the earth, fusile or non- fusile, shall we say that they come into existence--not having existed previously--by the creation of God, or shall we agree with vulgar opinion about them?
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: The opinion that nature brings them into being from some spontaneous and unintelligent cause. Or shall we say that they are created by a divine reason and a knowledge which comes from God?
THEAETETUS: I dare say that, owing to my youth, I may often waver in my view, but now when I look at you and see that you incline to refer them to God, I defer to your authority.
STRANGER: Nobly said, Theaetetus, and if I thought that you were one of those who would hereafter change your mind, I would have gently argued with you, and forced you to assent; but as I perceive that you will come of yourself and without any argument of mine, to that belief which, as you say, attracts you, I will not forestall the work of time. Let me suppose, then, that things which are said to be made by nature are the work of divine art, and that things which are made by man out of these are works of human art. And so there are two kinds of making and production, the one human and the other divine.
THEAETETUS: True.
-FJ
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