TIME magazine called him
“the unsung hero behind the Internet.”
CNN called him “A Father of the Internet.”
President Bill Clinton called him
“one of the great minds of the Information
Age.”
He has been voted history’s greatest scientist
of African descent.
He is Philip Emeagwali.
He is coming to Trinidad and Tobago
to launch the 2008 Kwame Ture lecture series
on Sunday June 8
at the JFK [John F. Kennedy] auditorium
UWI [The University of the West Indies]
Saint Augustine 5 p.m.
The Emancipation Support Committee
invites you to come and hear this inspirational
mind
address the theme:
“Crossing New Frontiers
to Conquer Today’s Challenges.”
This lecture is one you cannot afford to miss.
Admission is free.
So be there on Sunday June 8
5 p.m.
at the JFK auditorium UWI St. Augustine.
[Wild applause and cheering for 22 seconds]
[How I Invented My New Internet]
[A Small Boy in Charge of a Big Ship]
I began programming supercomputers
on June 20, 1974
in Corvallis, Oregon, United States.
I began supercomputing
with one of the world’s fastest supercomputers
that was at 1800 SW Campus Way,
Corvallis, Oregon.
That supercomputer
was the first to be rated
at one million instructions per second.
As a 19-year-old
supercomputer programmer,
I felt like a small boy
that was in charge of a big ocean liner
that turns slowly.
Three weeks after I began programming supercomputers,
I was on the cover of a newspaper
that circulated in the cities of
Monmouth and Independence, Oregon.
I became a local celebrity.
Over the years, I realized that
in Africa, a breakthrough technology
is a sacred object.
The African that invents
a groundbreaking technology
can occupy the position
between Albert Einstein
and Nelson Mandela
and occupy that position
in the minds of Africans
at home and in the diaspora.
That African inventor
is invited to seat
on the African high table.
The invention of the fastest supercomputer
is a concrete and visible achievement
that everybody understands
as pushing the frontier of technology
as well as the boundary
of human knowledge.
[Emailing Across My New Internet]
The act of inventing
is the courage to try the untried.
Everything I invented changed me.
I was never the same person
after an invention.
Before 1989,
the year I experimentally discovered
massively parallel processing,
I was described
as a research mathematician
or a research physicist.
After I experimentally discovered
massively parallel processing,
I was redefined
as a research supercomputer scientist.
But it took me sixteen years,
onward of June 20, 1974,
to be mentioned
in the June 20, 1990 issue
of The Wall Street Journal
and to become a supercomputer scientist
that invented a new supercomputer.
It took me sixteen years
of dedication, discipline,
and unpaid hard work
to become a supercomputer inventor
that is the subject of school reports.
On the Fourth of July 1989,
I experimentally discovered
how and why
parallel processing
makes modern computers faster
and makes the new supercomputer
the fastest.
Since that discovery, I really don’t know
what I should, or was, best known for.
The inventor is a prisoner
of his invention
and somewhat need an outsider
to fully explain his invention
to him.
Back in 1974,
I had a blurry vision
of the parallel processing supercomputer—that
is a new internet de facto
and that is not a new computer per se—
that I invented in the 1980s.
I needed the distance in time and space
to gain clarity
and understand that
I am the only father of the Internet
that invented a new internet.
[What Made Parallel Processing Impossible]
A story in the June 14, 1976 issue
of the Computer World magazine
was titled:
[quote]
“Research in Parallel Processing
Questioned as ‘Waste of Time’.”
[unquote]
To the Computer World magazine,
to invent parallel processing
was to show that
massively parallel processing the toughest
problems in supercomputing
is not a waste of time.
I was in the news in 1989
because I experimentally discovered
how to save time
and how to do so by reducing
65,536 days, or 180 years,
of time-to-solution on one processor
that is not a member of an ensemble
of processors
and reducing that time
to only one day of time-to-solution
across
an ensemble of 65,536 processors
that were the building blocks
of a new supercomputer.
That experimental discovery
was recognized in the June 20, 1990 issue
of The Wall Street Journal.
The achievement was recognized
because
I experimentally discovered that
the impossible-to-compute is, in fact,
possible-to-compute.
At the granite core
of my experimental discovery
that occurred
at 10:15 in the morning New York Time
Tuesday the Fourth of July 1989,
the US Independence Day,
was my one-to-one mapping
of my 65,536
initial-boundary value problems
of modern mathematics
and computational physics
and my mapping of those problems
to as many
commodity-off-the-shelf processors
that defined and outlined a new internet.
Prior to that experimental discovery
of the Fourth of July 1989
the mechanism
by which 64 binary thousand
computational physics codes
were synchronously emailed
to as many processors
remained unknown.
That experimental discovery
of the Fourth of July 1989
put to rest the saying that
parallel processing
is a beautiful theory
that lacked experimental confirmation.
[The Uncharted Road to Parallel Processing]
It takes eight minutes
to describe how I mapped
eight initial-boundary value problems
of modern calculus
and computational physics
and mapped them onto
eight processors
that were a subset
of the 64 binary thousand processors
that I visualized
as evenly distributed across
a small copy of the internet
that enshrouded a small globe.
At that rate of eight minutes
for eight processors,
it will take me ten thousand lectures,
to describe how I
experimentally mapped
two-to-power sixteen processors
across a new internet
that’s a global network of
sixty-five thousand
five hundred and thirty-six [65,536]
processors.
Looking back from June 20, 1974,
in Corvallis, Oregon, United States,
my lone search
for what makes modern computers faster
and for what makes the new supercomputer
the fastest
was like going into the Sambisa forest
of Northern Nigeria
alone
and in search for the elusive Chibok girls
that were held hostage
by Boko Haram fighters.
Parallel processing
was the Holy Grail
and the Chibok girls of supercomputing.
Searching for the fastest
parallel processing supercomputer
was like walking at night
and along an uncharted road
in the Sambisa forest of Northern Nigeria
and doing so armed against
Boko Haram fighters
with only a small lantern.
[How I Experimentally Discovered Parallel
Processing]
As we struggle to solve the grand challenges
of massively parallel supercomputing,
we reveal more grand challenges,
such as quantum computing.
On the Fourth of July 1989,
I experimentally discovered
parallel processing and, therefore,
nobody else can experimentally discover parallel
processing
again.
What was overlooked
in the news headlines
was that
my world record speed of
3.1 billion calculations per second
in 1989
was verified by The Computer Society
of the IEEE,
the largest society of computer professionals.
My world’s fastest calculation
was verified as evenly spread across
sixty-five thousand
five hundred and thirty-six [65,536]
commodity processors, or CPUs,
with each CPU contributing
47,303
calculations per second.
The Fourth of July 1989,
the US Independence Day,
was the day
I experimentally discovered
the world’s fastest computation
and discovered it
across
a massively parallel processing
supercomputer
that is the precursor
to the supercomputer of today
that, hopefully, will become
the computer of tomorrow.
[Divide-and-Conquer in Supercomputing]
There are three methods
that I could use to decompose
the oilfield
that my petroleum reservoir simulation
represented.
To experimentally discover
the fastest computation across
my ensemble of processors
demanded that I achieve
a one-to-one
nearest-neighbor mapping
of my 64 binary thousand
initial-boundary value problems
to my as many commodity processors.
In my first method,
called slab decomposition,
I divided my three-dimensional oilfield
into sixty-five thousand
five hundred and thirty-six [65,536]
one-dimensional slabs,
or oil-blocks.
In my second method,
called pencil decomposition,
I divided my three-dimensional oilfield
into sixty-five thousand
five hundred and thirty-six [65,536]
two-dimensional pencils,
or oil-blocks.
In my third method,
called block decomposition,
I divided my three-dimensional oilfield
into sixty-five thousand
five hundred and thirty-six [65,536]
three-dimensional oil-blocks.
This analogy
represents what we knew about
parallel processing
during the early 1970s.
What I believed in the 1970s
was that my email must travel across
sixty-five thousand
five hundred and THIRTY [65,530]
processors
to it be delivered to a processor
that’s five processor apart.
My 1970s thinking
was that if I try to send and receive
sixty-five thousand
five hundred and thirty-six [65,536]
emails at once
that I will fail in sending them all.
And as I intellectually matured
as a research mathematician
and as a research supercomputer scientist,
I discovered that
a computer screen comprising of
two hundred and fifty-six [256]
by two hundred and fifty-six [256] pixels,
or sixty-five thousand
five hundred and thirty-six [65,536]
cells,
can be coded with circularity.
In lay person’s terms,
circularity means that
the lower edge of the screen
touches the upper edge of the screen.
That circularity occurs
when the right side of the screen
touches the left side of the screen.
I coded circularity
into my email messaging
in the sixteenth dimension
—not in the two dimensions—
that I described.
But I applied the same concept
of circularity in the sixteenth dimension
and I did so, in part, to enable me to record
previously unrecorded speeds
in floating-point arithmetical calculations.
That circularity
was in the granite core
of my world’s fastest calculation
that was heard around the world.
My experimental discovery
of massively parallel processing
was the news headlines
because I recorded
the world’s fastest calculation
and I recorded it
by solving sixty-five thousand
five hundred and thirty-six [65,536]
problems at once.
That experimental discovery
of a new supercomputer
made the news headlines
in 1989,
and was recorded
in the June 20, 1990 issue
of the Wall Street Journal
and was in the June 27, 1990 issue
of The Chronicle of Higher Education,
the publication
that distributes news to universities.
[Parallel Processing Was Ridiculed]
When I began scalar supercomputing
on June 20, 1974
in Corvallis, Oregon, United States,
scalar processing
—or the one-step-at-a-time
serial computer approach—
was the frontier of knowledge
of supercomputers.
In 1974, vector processing
was the next-generation technology
for supercomputers.
In 1974, parallel processing
—or solving many problems at once,
instead of solving them one by one—
was an unknown land
to all supercomputer scientists.
In the 1970s, parallel processing
was embroiled in controversies
and countless ridiculing statements
were made about the technology.
I was not surprised
when my first lecture
on massively parallel processing
had only one attendee.
That lecture was in November 1982
in an auditorium
that was a short walk from
The White House
in Washington, DC.
That attendee
was an eccentric-looking, mid-thirties
white male in cowboy regalia
that included cowboy boots, a bolo tie,
and a Texan hat.
The second reason
my lecture on massively parallel processing
drew only one attendee
was that it was known in advance
that I was young and black
that was unpublished and unproven.
White male scientists
who began conducting research
before I was born
are not likely to listen to the discoveries
of a young black African
scientific researcher that was
unpublished and unproven.
In the early 1980s, the theoretical analyses
of extreme-scale
computational physics codes
didn’t meet up to publication standards
and were offhandedly rejected.
It was until the Fourth of July 1989
that I could experimentally prove
that massively parallel processing works.
To those white scientists, I was trespassing
in a space—a technological
terra incognita—that wasn’t mine.
My discovery story
was rejected
because it wasn’t their discovery story.
To many white historians of science,
a black inventor is a myth
until he becomes a white inventor
I’ve sat for a published portrait
in which the white illustrator portrayed me
as a white inventor
and did so
to make me acceptable
to his white readers.
When I gave my lectures
in 1982,
the massively parallel processing supercomputer
was ridiculed by everybody.
A story in the June 14, 1976 issue
of the Computer World magazine
was captioned:
“Research in Parallel Processing
Questioned as ‘Waste of Time’.”
[Science Fiction Becomes Science]
My supercomputing quest
was to make the fictional factual.
I began supercomputing
from the realm of science fiction.
I began supercomputing
from the realm of a fictionalized
two-to-power sixteen processors
that were married together
as one cohesive internet
and married by sixteen times
two-to-power sixteen email wires
that encircled the globe
in a sixteen-dimensional hyperspace.
I began supercomputing
on Thursday June 20, 1974,
in Corvallis, Oregon, United States.
I began supercomputing
not as a supercomputer scientist
but as a mathematician
that was more at home with
non-Euclidean geometry and topology
than with a single processor.
I began supercomputing
as a mathematical physicist
that was exposed to the
four-dimensional space time-continuum
of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
Because I began supercomputing
from theoretical physics
I found it easier to accept
extra dimensional thinking
that was then taboo
in engineering science.
My technological quest
for massively parallel processing
that makes modern computers faster
and makes the new supercomputer
the fastest
demanded that I think in
sixteen dimensions.
My quest
for the new supercomputer knowledge
that will make the new supercomputer
fastest
demanded that I imagine
a one-to-one correspondence
between the bi-directional edges
of the cube in the sixteenth dimension
and the sixteen times
two-to-power sixteen email wires
of my new internet
that encircled a globe
that I visualized
in the sixteenth dimension.
Also, my quest for the new knowledge
that will make the new internet
that is a new supercomputer
fastest
demanded that I imagine
and then that I visualize
another one-to-one correspondence
between the two-to-power sixteen
vertices of the cube
in the sixteenth dimension.
Since I was programming
all 65,536 processors,
and programming them blindfolded,
I had to correctly visualize
where each processor was located
—in my sixteenth dimension—and located
with respect to the other processors.
I imagined my ensemble
as one cohesive supercomputer
that’s a parallel processing machine,
that’s de facto
a small copy of the Internet.
That new internet
was a small copy
of a never-before-understood Internet,
that had only 65,536 processors
around a globe
instead of billions of computers
around a globe.
In the 1970s,
my parallel processing machine
was science fiction.
The belief that the technology
was science fiction
gave rise to the saying:
parallel processing
is a beautiful theory
that lacked an experimental confirmation.
A theory
is an idea that’s not positively true.
Yet, the sixteenth dimensional
that sounded like science fiction
to the petroleum engineer of the 1970s
that explores crude oil and natural gas
in the everyday three-dimensional world
also sounds like fact
to a mathematician used to thinking
in infinite dimensional subspaces.
The sixteenth dimensional
that sounded like a science fiction
to the computational physicist
of the 1970s
also sounds like a fact
to a theoretical physicist
that routinely imagines multi-dimensional
string theory or multi universes
or universes with different laws of physics.
I was a civil engineer
—an engineering physicist—who helped operate
dams, reservoirs, and power plants
that were along the North Platte River
of Wyoming, United States.
That intellectual difference
between the theoretical physicist
and the practical engineer
made it easier
for me—Philip Emeagwali—
that was both a theoretical physicist
and a practical engineer
to change the way I thought
we could make new supercomputers faster.
[The Fastest Parallel Human Computers]
It’s often forgotten that
parallel human computing
was discovered in the early 1940s.
Shortly after the Second World War,
parallel human computing
was used to crudely solve
ordinary differential equations
governing the motions of projectiles.
In the early 1940s,
ballistic computations were executed
by 150 women, each a human computer
that computed in parallel,
or computed 150 things
at a time,
instead of computing only one thing
at a time.
Those 150 female human computers
computed to solve
an ordinary differential equation
of calculus.
That ordinary differential equation
encoded the Second Law of Motion
of physics.
Those 150 human computers
computed, in parallel,
and computed six days a week
and computed
for the Ballistic Research Laboratory
in Aberdeen Proving Ground,
Aberdeen, Maryland,
that’s 26 miles outside
Baltimore, Maryland.
In early 1987, I declined a job offer
to program vector processing supercomputers
at Aberdeen Proving Ground,
the birthplace of the supercomputer.
I decline that job offer because
I was at the brink of completing
my research that made the news headlines
as the experimental discovery
of massively parallel supercomputing.
I declined that job offer, in part,
because Baltimore, Maryland
is the hometown of my parents-in-law.
There were university-trained
but were prevented by US segregation laws
of the 1940s
from applying
for computer programming jobs
at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
Black American scientists
of the generation of my father
were prevented from contributing
to the development of the computer.
The denial to black supercomputer scientists
of the opportunity to contribute
to the development of the computer
and to conduct research
at the frontier of the supercomputer
is a terminal illness
for American science and technology.
When I began supercomputing, in 1974,
the segregation law had been abolished
in the United States
which made it possible
for me to contribute
to the development
of the fastest supercomputer.
[How I Invented a New Internet]
My contribution
to the development
of the modern supercomputer
did not only reside
in seeing my new internet
and in seeing the technology
as a global network of
65,536 processors
and did not only reside
in seeing each processor
with my biological eyes.
I saw my new internet
inside my mind
and I saw the technology
as a new supercomputer
that was de facto
a new internet.
It was my being the first person
that saw the technology as a new internet
that proved that I invented the technology.
I was the first discoverer because
I was the lone wolf research
massively parallel processing
supercomputer scientist
of the 1970s and ‘80s.
I was the first discoverer because
I took a parallel processing
supercomputer path
that was orthogonal
to the vector processing
supercomputer path
that was taken by
the 25,000 vector processing
supercomputer scientists of the 1980s.
I was a research physicist
of the 1970s
that was not searching for
new laws of physics, per se.
I was a research mathematician
—in College Park, Maryland—
that was not searching for
new partial differential equations, per se.
And I was a research computer scientist
—in supercomputer centers across
the United States—
that was not searching for
new computer algorithms, per se.
On the contrary, my unorthodox quest
was for a new supercomputer
that is a new internet
that is defined and outlined
by a global network of
65,536 commodity processors.
My technological quest
was for the fastest supercomputer
and for how to reduce
65,536 days, or 180 years,
of time-to-solution
on only one processor
that is not a member
of an ensemble of processors
and how to reduce it
to just one day of time-to-solution
across a new supercomputer
that is a new internet
and that is defined
as a global network of
65,536 processors.
I experimentally discovered
that the 32 bi-directional email wires
that delivered emails
to and from
each of those 65,536 commodity processors
can deliver the fastest
processor-to-processor emails
and deliver them across
a global network of 1,048,576
bi-directional email wires
and deliver them
as many times faster
than a singular
processor-to-processor email.
That invention
redefined my new supercomputer
as a new superinternet.
In the 1970s and ‘80s,
I imagined my ensemble
of 65,536
commodity-off-the-shelf processors
as one cohesive new supercomputer
that’s a parallel processing machine,
that’s de facto
a small copy of a new internet.
That new internet
was a small copy
of a never-before-understood Internet
that had only 65,536 processors
around a globe
instead of billions of computers
around a globe.
For me, Philip Emeagwali,
to discover a new supercomputer
and to discover it’s technology
inside a new internet
was my act of harnessing
that untapped, total supercomputer power
that was buried
in the sixteenth dimension
and buried inside the bowels
of an ensemble of
two-to-power-sixteen
commodity-off-the-shelf processors
that were married together
as a new internet
that sends and receives emails
across sixteen times
two-to-power sixteen
bi-directional email wires.
To discover a new supercomputer
that is de facto a new internet
is the act of experimentally discovering
how to always execute
the world’s fastest computations
and execute them across
a global network of processors.
That experimental discovery
is my contribution
to the development of the
modern supercomputer
that is a new internet.
[Wild applause and cheering for 17 seconds]
Insightful and brilliant lecture
