Parallel processing

[Compgo123@xxxxxxx]

I'm not an expert in semiconductors, but do have some knowledge about
electronics. I may be wrong, but it seems the CPU clock rate is appraoching
the limit of transition time for silicon based IC's. I'm not aware of any
circuit that has a rise time below 1 ns. Thus, it seems parallel processing is
inevitable including in computer Go.

In this post I'd like to discuss the possibility of building a highly parallel
(with 10 CPUs or more) computer in one's basement. At present market price,
one can get 10 266 Mhz CPUs for under $1000. One can get a sophisticated( the
one for the parallel computer) printed circuit board made for several  hundred
bucks. Digital and analog electronic design and simulation softwares, and
printed circuit board design  softwares are widely available. Thus, the
question is how do we design such a computer. Another problem is if there are
software available for such a parallel computer. Software is a far more
serious problem than the hardware because of the sheer man-years it needed to
develop. I think this problem can be solved by design a operating system level
controled parallel computer.  One can build a front end that is compatible
with available operating system (Windows98, Linux) and the compiler (i.g.
VC++). Then, the front end communicates with rest of the system through one or
more high speed address ports. Or directly through the bus, just acts like a
plug in board. Such a computer can easily increase the processing speed by a
factor of 10 or more. The alpha-beta search in computer Go is very suitable
for parallel processing. A commercial computer with eqivalent speed would
costs several tens of thousand even more than one hundred thousand dollars. On
the other hand I think  above mentioned computer can be built for under $4000.


Dan Liu