Philip Emeagwali
Author Philip Emeagwali
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Philip Emeagwali Lectures
3.1.1 Gazing Across 1,000 Millennia

The invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

is the single most transformative technology

and the biggest advance in physics

since Newton, Galileo.

The computer is integral

to human civilization.

The computer

is the greatest invention

of the 20th century.

Parallel processing

is the biggest advance

in the history of the computer.

We have changed

the way we think about the computer,

from computing with only one processor

to supercomputing across

millions upon millions of processors.

3.1.2 Philip Emeagwali Supercomputer

Back in 1990,

I made headlines

in major U.S. newspapers because

I had invented something new

—namely, a new internet

that is a new supercomputer de facto

but that is not a new computer per se.

That internet

could have been invented earlier

but was not.

Fire is man’s first invention,

or rather man’s first discovery.

The computer is the greatest invention

since fire was discovered.

The modern supercomputer

is the greatest invention

in modern physics.

The computer was invented

not because

we did not know how to compute.

The computer was invented

because we needed to compute faster,

and sometimes to compute infinitely fast.

And the supercomputer

is the fastest computer.

The modern supercomputer

is a tool

that enables the mind

to go where the eyes cannot see.

To invent a never-before-seen supercomputer

is to turn fiction into fact

and do so by computing at

unheard of speeds

and supercomputing to solve

grand challenge problems

arising in extreme-scale

computational physics

and that were otherwise impossible

to solve

on existing supercomputers.

That was the reason

I was in the news headlines

back in 1989.

Banquet speaker at Jamaica Medical Foundation’s gala fundraising banquet at the Hilton Kingston Hotel. Photo taken on March 24, 2001.

3.1.3 A Child Soldier’s Story

I’m Philip Emeagwali,

a child soldier

on the Biafran side

of the Nigeria Biafra War,

a war that raged

during the last 30 months

of the 1960s,

a war that was described as

Africa’s bloodiest war,

and a war

in which one in fifteen Biafrans died.

My twenty-year long journey

began at a war front

in July 1969

and ended at the frontier of knowledge.

The turning point in my journey

to the frontier

of the most massively

parallel processing supercomputer

occurred twenty years

before my experimental discovery

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

that, in turn, occurred

on the Fourth of July 1989

in Los Alamos, New Mexico,

United States.

In July 1969, I was conscripted

as a 14-year-old soldier

and sent to the Oguta War Front,

Igbo Land, Biafra, West Africa.

I was the youngest soldier there.

That war

turned my ancestral homeland

into Africa’s bloodiest battlefield.

I arrived at the Oguta War Front

a few days after

500 Biafran soldiers

fell dead on the ground.

Five hundred soldiers fell

as if they were dry leaves.

I was conscripted

to replace

one of these 500 men.

At the Oguta War Front of Biafra,

they were more guns

than pens.

That 30-month-long war

ended on July 15, 1970

with the defeat of Biafra.

3.1.4 Chronicles From Biafran Refugee Camps

A twelve-year old

writing her school report

asked for a little known fact

about Philip Emeagwali.

I asked her:

What else does Philip Emeagwali

have in common

with the German-born

theoretical physicist Albert Einstein

or with the South Sudanese-born

supermodel Alek Wek

or with the South African-born

singer Miriam Makeba

or with the South African-born

novelist Nadine Gordimer

or with the Haitian-born

former Governor General of Canada

Michaëlle Jean?

The answer is that we were all

former refugees

who were featured in a school poster.

That school poster was titled:

“Refugees You May Know.”

Because of that refugee poster

I received letters from Somali refugees

in Kenya, from refugees

from the Democratic Republic of Congo, from refugees in Ethiopia,

from refugees in Burundi, Rwanda,

and Liberia.

That refugee poster

was produced and distributed

by the United Nations.

According to the United Nations,

65 million persecuted people

were forced to flee from their homes

and forced to flee from civil wars

and forced to flee from areas

that were afflicted

with severe food shortages.

For three years of the late 1960s,

I was a refugee in Biafra

who mostly lived in classrooms

that were converted into living rooms.

For three years,

all schools in Biafra

were closed and converted into makeshift, overcrowded housing,

and feeding centers

for millions upon millions

of Biafran refugees.

3.1.5 One Day We Had to Run!

In early 1968, Russian MiG 17s

—the same high-subsonic fighter aircrafts

that were heavily used in Vietnam—

and Russian Ilyushin 28s bombers

paid us regular visits

in Onitsha (Biafra).

From the Inland Town quarters,

Enu Onicha, of Onitsha

and on Wednesday March 20, 1968

we saw Biafran soldiers

fleeing on foot from Abagana War Front.

Abagana was a five-hour walk

from our residence.

It was from fleeing Biafran soldiers

that we learned that

my ancestral hometown of Onitsha (Nigeria)

would be captured in six hours.

We knew the Nigerian army

did not take prisoners.

We had learned from the “Dance of Death”

of October 7, 1967 in Asaba (Nigeria)

that 700 unarmed civilian men

were murdered.

So we knew to flee immediately.

We fled from 14 Mba Road, Umudei Village, Onitsha (Biafra),

the residence of my uncle John Emeagwali,

to Merchants of Light School, Oba (Biafra).

That flight from Onitsha

was the last time

I saw John Emeagwali’s residence

that was at 14 Mba Road, Onitsha.

That residence

that was built six years earlier

was ground zeroed

by either a bomb or a rocket or a cannon

fired by the Nigerian Army.

Please allow me to quote

from another eyewitness account

what happened in Onitsha (Biafra)

on the night we fled.

This eyewitness account was titled:

“Nightmare in Biafra.”

This eyewitness account

of the night of March 20, 1968

that we fled Onitsha (Biafra)

appeared in the “Sunday Times”

of London [England]

on page 12 April 26, 1968.

[And I quote]

“I have seen things in Biafra this week

which no man should have to see.

Sights to search the heart

and sicken the conscience.

I have seen children roasted alive,

young girls torn in two by shrapnel,

pregnant women eviscerated,

and old men blown to fragments.

I have seen these things

and I have seen their cause:

high-flying Russian Ilyushin jets

operated by Federal Nigeria,

dropping their bombs

on civilian centres throughout Biafra.

[End of quote]

The war correspondent

who wrote the article

“Nightmare in Biafra”

continued:

[And I quote]

“At Onitsha,

under siege from the federal troops,

the three-hundred-strong congregation

of the Apostolic Church

decided to stay on

while others fled

and to pray for deliverance.

Col. Mohammed’s Second Division

found them in the church,

dragged them out,

tied their hands behind their backs

and executed them.”

[End of quote]

3.2 How I Invented a New Supercomputer

3.2.1 Philip Emeagwali Origin Story

My ancestral origin

is from the Igbo-speaking people

of southeastern region of Nigeria.

According to an Igbo proverb:

[quote]

“A new fowl, in a new land,

looks at the old fowls

to learn how to crow

in their new language.”

[unquote]

I—Philip Emeagwali—was the new fowl

in the then unknown land

of the modern supercomputer.

I was the new fowl

in massively parallel processing

supercomputing

who did not look at the old fowls

in vector processing supercomputing.

I did not learn from the old fowls

how to invent

a never-before-seen internet

that is a new supercomputer de facto

but that is not a computer per se.

3.2.2 My Quest for the Fastest Supercomputer

Parallel processing was scorned

as a beautiful theory

that lacked experimental confirmation.

I began supercomputing

when I was only nineteen years old.

I began supercomputing

at 1800 SW Campus Way,

Corvallis, Oregon, United States.

When I began supercomputing,

I was new in the United States,

having arrived on March 24, 1974

after receiving a scholarship letter

that was dated September 10, 1973.

3.2.3 Who Is It that Can Tell Me Who I Am?

Who is it

that can tell me

who I am?

I am Philip Emeagwali,

born on August 23, 1954

in Akure, to Igbo parents

who were living in the heart of Yoruba Land.

I was born

in the then British West African colony

of Nigeria.

In a sense, my story began

in the faraway United States

seven years before I was born

in the August 25, 1947 issue

of The New York Times

that carried an article titled:

“New Giant ‘Brain’ Does Wizard Work.”

That New York Times article explained that:

[And I quote]

“…the machines under construction

will have a ‘built-in intelligence’

which will enable them to handle

the most complicated differential equations

of physics and engineering,

performing hundreds of

separate mathematical operations

without the intervention

of a human operator…”

[unquote]

Forty-three years

after that big question

was posed in The New York Times,

I solved the problem

that was listed

by the United States government

as one of the twenty grand challenges

in supercomputing.

For that breakthrough,

I was in major U.S. newspapers,

such as in the June 20, 1990 issue

of the Wall Street Journal.

I was in the news because

my invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

that occurred on the Fourth of July 1989

was an invention

of a new supercomputer

with ‘built-in intelligence,’

that solves the toughest

partial differential equations

arising in physics,

or in extreme-scale

computational fluid dynamics.

The poster boy

of these grand challenge problems

is the general circulation model

that must be used to foresee

otherwise unforeseeable climate changes.

I was in the news because

of my invention

of how to send and receive

64 binary thousand email messages

and how to do so across

my ensemble of 65,536

tightly-coupled processors.

I was in the news because

of my invention

of how to perform the world’s fastest supercomputer calculations

ever recorded

and how to always record

a world record speed in supercomputing

and how to do so across

a new global network of processors

that is a new internet

and a new supercomputer

and a new computer.

A discovery or an invention

is like the moon.

It has two parts:

the visible part and the hidden part.

For that reason, I am well known

but I am not known well.

3.3 From Soldier to Scientist

3.3.1 My Discovery of the Fastest Supercomputer

A 12-year-old asked me:

“I’m doing a school report

on the development of the computer.

Why are you called

the father

of the modern computer

that solves many problems at once?”

I answered:

“The computer

has many fathers and mothers,

uncles and aunts.

But I am the only father

of the computer

who was profiled

in major U.S. newspapers

and who was credited

for the invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer.”

I was in major U.S. newspapers

because I made the first

experimental measurement

of the world’s fastest computation

ever recorded across

an ensemble of the slowest processors

in the world.

3.3.2 Why I Was in the Newspapers

The reason my invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

was written about in major U.S. newspapers

was that it opened the door

for speeding up 30,000 years

of time-to-solution

on one computer

that computed

with only one processor

to just one day of time-to-solution

on one supercomputer

that simultaneously computed across

a tightly-coupled

ensemble of ten million processors.

At its core primordial essence,

my quest

for a never-before-seen supercomputer

aimed to change the way

we solve the toughest problems

arising in calculus and algebra

and to change that way

from solving the toughest problems

on only one computer

powered by only one processor

that is not a member

of an ensemble of processors

to solving the toughest problems

across millions upon millions

of tightly-coupled

commodity-off-the-shelf processors

that shared nothing between each other.

3.4 Who Is It that Can Tell Me I’m Mad

3.4.1 My Struggles to Invent the Supercomputer

Asking a person to become

the first programmer

of the first massively parallel processing supercomputer

was like asking a man

who had never climbed a mountain

to climb Mount Everest.

Because it was considered impossible,

back in the 1970s and ‘80s,

to program the first

massively parallel processing supercomputer

nobody took me seriously

in my solo attempt

to climb the Mount Everest

of the world of supercomputers.

In my fifteen years of supercomputing,

onward of June 20, 1974,

I made mistakes

but I was open

to quick course corrections.

Those corrections

took me to the unknown world

of massively parallel processing across

a new internet

that is a small copy

of the global internet

that encircles the Earth.

My new internet

is a new global network of

64 binary thousand

tightly-coupled processors.

Each processor

has its own operating system.

Each processor

has its own dedicated memory

that shares nothing with each other.

3.4.2 Before and After My Discovery

Before my invention

of the massively parallel processing

supercomputer

that occurred

on the Fourth of July 1989,

the word “supercomputer”

referred to a supercomputing machinery

that is powered by only one

central processing unit.

After my invention,

the word “supercomputer”

referred to a supercomputing machinery

that is powered by up to

ten binary million

central processing units.

3.4.3 Philip Emeagwali Invention

I am the first person to discover

the fastest computations across

the slowest processors.

Since my 1989 invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer,

I felt like the ancient mariner

who travelled around the world

to tell his story and give lectures

to different people.

My invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

that is a new internet

enabled me to compress

180 years of time-to-solution

on only one processor

and to compress that time

to just one day of time-to-solution

across my new internet

that is my new global network of

64 binary thousand

processors

that computed in parallel.

I invented

how to solve

grand challenge problems

arising in supercomputing

and how to solve them in real-time,

instead of taking a life time

to solve them.

I invented

the fastest massively parallel processing supercomputer

that an oil company can use

to reduce its time-to-market,

such as the time between the discovery of crude oil and natural gas

in the Niger Delta Region

of southeastern Nigeria

and the recovery of that crude oil

and natural gas.

3.4.4 I Was Dismissed From Research Teams

For the sixteen years,

onward of age 19 and of June 20, 1974,

I conducted my supercomputer research

alone.

I did so alone

because I was ridiculed, mocked,

and rejected

by all-white research teams

that were exclusively programming

only sequential and vector processing supercomputers.

That rejection

forced me to forge a different path

to the modern supercomputer

that solves many problems at once.

That rejection

forced me to think individually

on how to harness the power of

the massively parallel processing

supercomputer

and how to invent

the technology

and know it, for the first time,

as the engine that drives

the modern supercomputer.

3.5 At First, My Invention Was Rejected

3.5.1 The Grand Challenge Question

In the 1980s and earlier,

the big question

in the world of the supercomputer

was:

“Can an ensemble

of the slowest processors

outperform the fastest supercomputer

and change the way

we look at the modern computer?”

In 1989,

there were 25,000 users

of vector processing supercomputers.

I was the only full-time programmer

of the handful of

massively parallel processing supercomputers

of the 1980s.

Gene Amdahl and Seymour Cray,

the two leading opponents

of the parallel processing supercomputer,

argued that it will forever

remain impossible

to parallel process through as many as

eight processors or computer cores.

The reason my invention

of the massively parallel processing

supercomputer

made the news headlines

and was highlighted

in the June 20, 1990 issue

of The Wall Street Journal

was that the parallel processing supercomputer technology of today

was then dismissed and abandoned

by the leaders of thought

in supercomputing—namely,

Gene Amdahl and Seymour Cray—

and was then rejected

by their 25,000 followers,

each a vector processing

supercomputer scientist.

Those 25,000 supercomputer scientists

scorned, ridiculed, and dismissed

the massively parallel processing supercomputer

as a huge waste of everybody’s time.

In the nineteen-eighties [1980s],

I was dismissed

from my research teams

and dismissed

for advocating

the massively parallel processing supercomputer.

3.5.2 A New Way of Looking at the Computer

I experimentally discovered

that the conventional wisdom

described in supercomputer textbooks

as Amdahl’s Law was wrong.

I invented

a new way of looking at the computer

and solving the toughest problems

arising in physics.

In the old way of solving

the most computation-intensive problems

in extreme-scale computational physics

and before my invention

that occurred

on the Fourth of July 1989,

the most extreme-scaled

algebraic computations

arising in physics

were solved across

a singular, customized,

and ultra-expensive vector processor

that processed

only one thing, or a string of numbers

called vectors, at a time.

That vector processing supercomputer

was the fastest supercomputer

during the decades of the 1970s and ‘80s.

But in my new way,

that is, the new

massively parallel processing supercomputer,

that I mathematically and experimentally invented

on the Fourth of July 1989

in Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States,

I figured out

how to solve, in parallel,

the most extreme-scale problems

that has algebra, calculus, and physics

at their foundations

and as their common denominators.

And I invented that technology

by parallel processing

those grand challenge problems across

my ensemble of 65,536 tightly-coupled,

commodity-off-the-shelf processors

that shared nothing between each other

that I visualized

as a new internet

that is a new global network of

two-raised-to-power sixteen

commodity processors.

3.5.3 The Impossible is Possible, Sometimes

In high-performance supercomputing,

wizardry

is making the impossible-to-compute

possible-to-compute.

The June 14, 1976 issue

of the Computer World

carried an article that was titled:

[quote]

“Research in Parallel Processing Questioned as ‘Waste of Time’.”

[unquote]

On the Fourth of July 1989,

the day I invented

the massively parallel processing supercomputer,

the 25,000 vector processing supercomputer scientists in the world that were led by Seymour Cray

believed that

parallel processing will forever remain

a huge waste of everybody’s time.

3.5.4 Chickens Versus Oxen Debate

Perhaps, it is only at a very visceral level

that you will recognize the father

of the modern supercomputer

that computes in parallel across

sixty-five thousand processors

or across sixty-five million processors.

Back in 1989,

25,000 supercomputer programmers

abandoned the pre-cursors

of the modern

massively parallel processing supercomputer

that computes across processors,

or across tiny computers.

The leader in the world of

the vector processing supercomputer,

Seymour Cray,

was the strongest opponent

of the modern, massively parallel processing supercomputer.

To date, the brainiest quote of Seymour Cray is this:

“If you were plowing a field,

which would you rather use?

Two strong oxen

or 1,024 chickens?”

Seymour Cray would rather compute

with two strong oxen

for the two fastest, most expensive,

and customized processors

in the world.

I—Philip Emeagwali—would rather compute

with 1,024 chickens

for the 1,024 slowest, least expensive,

and commodity-off-the-shelf processors

in the world.

As was widely reported

—including in the June 20, 1990 issue

of the Wall Street Journal,

I—Philip Emeagwali—

experimentally discovered

that 65,536 chickens

are more powerful than two strong oxen.

3.5.5 I Was Devoured Like a Lamb

My scientific truth was controversial

in the 1970s and ‘80s.

In those two decades, I was banished

from the community of

25,000 vector processing

supercomputer scientists.

I was forced to parallel program abandoned massively parallel processing supercomputers

as a lone wolf.

As the first black person

to win the top prize in supercomputing

and as the only person to win that prize alone,

I was devoured like a lamb

and my garments

were soiled in mockery.

3.5.6 Steve Jobs Scorned Parallel Processing

Steve Jobs

mocked parallel processing

as a huge waste of everybody’s time.

In the June 10, 2008 issue

of the New York Times,

Steve Jobs

was quoted as telling

Apple’s Worldwide Developers

that [And I quote, Steve Jobs]:

“The way the processor industry

is going

is to add more and more cores,

but nobody knows

how to program

those things,”

Steve Jobs continued:

“I mean, two, yeah;

four, not really;

eight, forget it.”

[End of quote]

3.5.7 Changing the Way We Look at the Computer

Philip Emeagwali

is the subject of school reports because

my contributions

changed the way we look at

the supercomputer.

In the old way

and before my invention,

we thought of the supercomputer

as doing only one thing

at a time,

and doing that thing

with only one vector processor.

In my new way

and after my invention,

we think of the supercomputer

as doing many things

at once,

and doing those things

with millions upon millions

of processors.

That is, I experimentally discovered

how and why

the modern supercomputer

must compute in parallel

in order to simultaneously solve

millions upon millions

of the most grand challenging problems

arising in physics and mathematics,

instead of solving

only one grand challenge problem

at a time.

After my invention,

the number of parallel processing supercomputers exploded.

Before my invention,

parallel processing was scorned, ridiculed, and rejected

as a beautiful theory

that lacked an

experimental confirmation.

To discover or invent

the massively parallel processing supercomputer

is to make the impossible-to-compute possible-to-compute.

3.5.8 The Fastest Supercomputer

I was the first

massively parallel processing

supercomputer scientist

to record the fastest speed.

To record the fastest recorded supercomputer speeds

and to record them across

a new internet

demanded that

I visualized my emails

as exploding across my new internet.

I visualized emails

as exploding

like bullets out of my eyes.

3.6 How I Invented a New Supercomputer

At its granite core,

the fastest supercomputer

is only fastest and super

if and only if

it computes in parallel

and did so to solve the previously unsolveable.

3.6.1 Father of the Internet

A 12-year-old wrote to me

and asked:

“I’m doing a school report

on the internet.

Why are you called

the father of the Internet?”

I answered:

“The internet

has many fathers and mothers,

uncles and aunts.

But I am the only father

of the Internet

that invented a new internet.

I am the only father

of the modern supercomputer

who was in major U.S. newspapers

and who was profiled

for the invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer.”

3.6.2 The First Eyewitness in Modern Supercomputing

The toughest problems

arising in extreme-scale

computational physics

are linked by a common thread, namely,

the modern supercomputer

that parallel processes

their extremely computation-intensive floating-point arithmetical computations

and executes them across

an ensemble of up to ten million

commodity-off-the-shelf processors.

I, Philip Emeagwali,

was the first eyewitness

to discovery how and why

a new ensemble of the slowest processors

that computes together

as one seamless, cohesive

massively parallel processing supercomputer

is a new internet, de facto.

My invention

was how to make a new internet

that is a new global network of

65,536 tightly-coupled processors

and how to make

those processors invisible individually

but yet visible

as one seamless, cohesive supercomputer

that solves the toughest problems

arising in mathematics or physics.

Before my invention,

the toughest problems

arising in computational physics

were inaccurately solved

on only one processor

that was not a member

of an ensemble of processors.

After my invention,

the toughest problems

arising in computational physics

are more accurately solved

across

an ensemble of up to ten million

six hundred and forty-nine thousand

six hundred [10,649,600]

tightly-coupled and commonly available processors

that shared nothing with each other.

3.6.3 My Paradigm Shift in Computing

My invention

of the massively parallel processing

supercomputer

changed the way

the petroleum industry discovered

and recovered

otherwise undiscoverable

and unrecoverable crude oil and natural gas.

My experimental discovery

of how and why parallel processing

makes

the modern supercomputer fastest

changed the way

we think about how to build

the fastest computer.

That invention

changed the way we solve

the toughest problems

arising in algebra, calculus, and physics.

The now ubiquitous technology

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

that was scorned and rejected

in the 1940s through ‘80s

is used by practicing engineers

and used to increase their productivity

and used to reduce their time-to-market.

3.6.4 A World Without the Modern Computer

“What will the world be like

without the parallel processing

computer technology?”

A world without the

parallel processing computer

is a world

in which ninety-nine

of the one hundred processors

inside your computer

is turned off and you’re computing at

only one percent of your computer capacity

and perhaps, achieving only one percent productivity level.

A world without the massively

parallel processing supercomputer

is a world

in which fewer discoveries are made,

is a world

in which innovation is slowed down,

is a world

in which human progress is slowed down, and is a world

in which the computer of tomorrow

cannot be invented today

thus making it impossible

for us to create the future.

Faster supercomputers

are where science fiction will become

non-fiction.

The fastest supercomputer

is where humanity’s future takes shape.

3.6.5 Benefits of Philip Emeagwali Invention

To invent a new supercomputer

is to create new wealth.

The potential benefits to mankind

of the fastest supercomputer

were highlighted in numerous articles,

such as that in the May 8, 1987 issue

of The Chronicle of Higher Education

that was titled:

[quote]

“Some Hail ‘Computational Science’

as Biggest Advance Since Newton, Galileo.”

[unquote]

Fast forward three years,

the June 27, 1990 issue

of The Chronicle of Higher Education published a follow-up article that proclaimed that I—Philip Emeagwali—

had made one of the biggest advances

in computational science.

That biggest advancement

was to invent a new internet

that is a new supercomputer

and a new computer

and to invent them

by making the impossible-to-compute

possible-to-compute.

Theorized parallel processing

was in the air for the 43 years

prior to my invention.

The January 11, 1946 issue

of the New York Times

mentioned parallel processing

as science fiction

and as 100 computers

that could forecast the weather

all over the world

and that

[quote]

“the United States

would be divided into ‘blocks’

penetrating into the stratosphere.”

[unquote]

I—Philip Emeagwali—

read that New York Times article

and made the leap of imagination

from the 100 computers

that were theorized in 1946

to the 64 binary thousand

processors

that I theorized 28 years later

and that I experimentally programmed

43 years later

and that I used to invent

the massively parallel processing supercomputer.

For 43 years after that

New York Times article,

parallel processing

was scorned, ridiculed, and rejected

as a beautiful theory

that lacked experimental confirmation.

3.6.6 My Eureka Moment of Discovery

Parallel processing

was experimentally confirmed

by I—Philip Emeagwali—and confirmed at 8:15 in the morning

of the Fourth of July 1989

in Los Alamos, New Mexico,

United States.

On that date, parallel processing

was verified by the experiment

that I executed across

a new internet

that was outlined by sixteen times

two-raised-to-power-sixteen,

or 1,048,576 bi-directional email wires that married

two-raised-to-power-sixteen processors

together

as one seamless, cohesive supercomputer

that was the precursor

to the modern supercomputer

as well as the modern computer.

That was the day

parallel processing passed

the merciless test

that I conducted across

my new internet.

I was in major U.S. newspapers

because I provided

the lockdown evidence

that the massively parallel processing supercomputer

can be used to solve

the toughest problems

arising in extreme-scale

computational physics.

I attracted media attention

because my invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

yielded a measurable

and a quantum increase

in the speed of computation

that became my quantifiable contribution

to the development of the

modern supercomputer.

3.6.7 The Necessary Condition for Inventing a Supercomputer

Making a technological invention

demands an intercourse

between the sciences, and, demands

the exchange of fluids,

or rather the exchange of knowledge.

That exchange is a necessary condition

to making a scientific discovery.

Scientific babies, or new discoveries, come from a respectful

and joyous exchange of fluids.

For me, Philip Emeagwali,

that exchange of new knowledge, occurred at the crossroad

where physics, mathematics,

and computer science met

and occurred

at 8:15 in the morning

of the Fourth of July 1989.

That crossroad

was where I made the invention

that opened

new possibilities in supercomputing.

3.7 Please Don’t Call Me a Genius

It’s a myth that only brilliance

is required

to become a supercomputer genius

that invented a never-before-seen supercomputer.

Talent is a necessary condition

but it is not a sufficient condition

for solving the toughest problems

arising in modern calculus

and in extreme-scale computational physics.

I was asked:

“Are you a black genius?”

I answered:

“The genius

is the ordinary person

that found the extraordinary

in the ordinary.”

The mathematical genius

is just an ordinary mathematician

who discovered an extraordinary equation

on an ordinary blackboard.

3.7.1 The Philip Emeagwali Experiment

I used my new internet

to experimentally confirm that

65,536 days, or 180 years,

of time-to-solution

can be compressed to only one day

of time-to-solution

and compressed across a new internet

that is a new global network of

65,536 tightly-coupled processors

that shared nothing between each other.

I wrote 65,536 supercomputer codes

that each solved

an initial-boundary value problem

that arose in extreme-scale

petroleum reservoir simulation.

I message-passed

those supercomputer codes

to my two-raised-to-power-sixteen,

or 65,536,

commonly available processors

that shared nothing between each other.

And I had as many sixteen-bit

addressed emails

that must traverse across

my sixteen times

two-raised-to-power-sixteen,

or 1,048,576, bi-directional email wires

that I visualized

as tightly encircling

the fifteen-dimensional hypersurface

of a hypersphere

in a sixteen-dimensional hyperspace.

I visualized my new massively

parallel processing supercomputer

differently from others.

I visualized my new massively

parallel processing supercomputer

as a new internet.

I invented the technology

as the starting point

of the mass production

for the commercialization

of parallel processing computers

and massively parallel processing supercomputers.

3.7.2 Philip Emeagwali Invention

I invented

the massively parallel processing

supercomputer.

I invented the technology

at the frontiers of knowledge

in physics, mathematics,

and supercomputing.

I invented

that never-before-understood

supercomputer

as a never-before-seen

internet.

I invented the technology

by looking beyond my blackboard,

looking towards my motherboard,

and looking across

my new internet

that I visualized as my new

global network of

64 binary thousand motherboards.

3.7.3 Solving the Toughest Problem

Unlike the research mathematician

who only looks at his blackboard,

I looked across

my new internet

and I did so to both theoretically

and experimentally discover

that my system of diagonal equations

of algebra

that arose from solving

my specific grand challenge problem

arising in extreme-scale

computational physics

need not be equivalent

to the system of tri-diagonal equations

of algebra

that also arose

from solving the same

specific grand challenge problem

arising in extreme-scale

computational physics.

However, they both must solve

equivalent problems

in extreme-scale computational physics,

and solve those problems correctly.

They both must be equivalent

in the governing set of laws

of physics

from which each system of equations

of extreme-scale algebra

arose.

It was across my ensemble of

64 binary thousand processors

that I connected

with the power of algebra.

I was in the news because

I invented

how to solve

the toughest problems

arising in algebra, calculus, and physics.

At its algebra core,

that toughest problem

is a world record system of

partial difference equations.

I invented

how to solve those algebraic problems

and how to solve them

across a world record

number of processors.

My invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

opened the door

to extreme-scale algebra

that arises in extreme-scale computational physics.

The system of equations

that I invented

were both differential and algebraic.

My algebraic equations

arose from my differential equations

that, in turn, arose from

the laws of physics.

Both systems of mathematical equations

could be used to discover and recover

otherwise elusive

crude oil and natural gas.

To push the frontier

of the fastest supercomputer

and thus to invent

a never-before-seen computer

was to harness

the massively parallel processing

supercomputer

and to use that technology

to show that the impossible-to-compute is, in fact, possible-to-compute

and to do the impossible

at a time when

every vector processing

supercomputer scientist warned that

parallel processing will forever remain

a huge waste of everybody’s time.

Throughout history, every inventor entered the

unknown world, or the terra incognita

of technology,

before the invention

became the news headlines.

Their biographers,

or authorized story tellers,

came on the scene,

often decades after the inventor

is no longer with us.

3.8 Gazing Across the Millennia

In the 1970s and ‘80s,

I—Philip Emeagwali—

was the new and the first

massively parallel processing

supercomputer scientist

that was the lone voice

in the wilderness

of the then unknown world

of parallel processing supercomputing.

In my vision

and as the primal programmer

of a primordial internet,

I saw those processors

as 65,536

equidistant search lights

around a global sky.

I saw those search lights

as three thousand square miles

apart from each other.

I saw those search lights

pointing towards

the darkest corners

of human understanding

of global issues,

such as global warming.

The massively parallel processing supercomputer

was not invented

by the team of 25,000

vector processing supercomputer scientists

of the 1980s.

Those conventional supercomputer scientists scorned, ridiculed, and dismissed

the massively parallel processing supercomputer

as a huge waste of everybody’s time.

I conducted

the parallel processing experiment

that led to the invention

on the Fourth of July 1989

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer.

I—Philip Emeagwali—was the only person who discovered

how to harness

the total supercomputer power

of 65,536 separate processors.

I was the first to understand

how and why

a new ensemble of the slowest processors

that computes together

as one seamless, cohesive

massively parallel processing supercomputer

is a new internet, de facto.

I had the visceral understanding

that the massively parallel processing supercomputer

is not a computer, per se.

I experimentally discovered

that my massively parallel processing supercomputer

that I visualized

as a small global network of

65,536 commodity processors

that were identical

and that were equal distances

apart

is a small internet, de facto.

I experimentally discovered

a new supercomputer

that encircled a globe

in the way the internet does.

I was in the news for theoretically

and experimentally discovering

that parallel processing

is an entirely new way of supercomputing

across thousands or millions or billions

of tightly-coupled

commodity-off-the-shelf processors

that were identical

and that were equal distances apart

and that encircled

a globe in sixteen-dimensional hyperspace

and encircled it

the way the internet

encircled a globe

in three-dimensional space.

A discovery is like a stone

thrown into the pool of knowledge.

The discovery

generates wider ripples

each time we throw it

into the pool of knowledge,

or apply it.

The discovery in science

open up doors in technology

and makes the world a better place

and humanity more knowledgeable.

An African Mathematician and His Contributions to Mathematics

Philip Emeagwali Lecture 180914

Visit http://emeagwali.com for complete transcripts of 100+ lectures.

Video: https://YouTube.com/emeagwali

Podcast: https://SoundCloud.com/emeagwali

The need to calculate

is as old as humanity.

The need to compute

existed because it is central to

human existence.

The Latin equivalence

of the word “computer”

was first used in print

two thousand years ago.

The word “computer”

was first used by the Roman author

Pliny the Elder.

The word “supercomputer”

was coined in 1967.

I believe that our children’s children

will coin a new word

for their supercomputers.

I believe that our children’s children

will invent supercomputers

that are science fiction to us.

Contributions of Philip Emeagwali to Algebra

The discovery and recovery

of every single barrel of oil

from any oilfield

in the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria

must be preceded

by the massively parallel processed solution of the toughest problem

in extreme-scale algebra.

For the fifteen years, inclusive

of from the 20th of June of 1974

that I was in Corvallis, Oregon, United States

through the Fourth of July 1989

in Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States,

I conducted my supercomputer research,

and did so from speeds of

one million instructions per second

in Oregon

to billions upon billions

of floating-point arithmetical calculations

that I executed across

a new internet

that is outlined and defined

by a new global network of

two-raised-to-power sixteen

tightly-coupled processors

that are commonly available

in the market.

Each of those 64 binary thousand

commodity processors

operated its own operating system.

Each of those 65,536 processors

has its own dedicated memory

that shares nothing with each other.

I was in the news in 1989

because I invented

how to solve the most

computation-intensive problems

arising in large-scale

algebraic computations.

Such problems arose from discretizing partial differential equations

that, in turn, arose from

physics-based supercomputer simulations

of the motions of fluids

that flow below the surface of the Earth,

such as the mile-deep

crude oil, injected water, and natural gas

in the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria;

and from supercomputer simulations

of the motions of fluids

that flow on the surface of the Earth,

such as the River Niger, Lake Chad,

and the Atlantic ocean;

and from supercomputer simulations

of the motions of fluids

that flow above the surface of the Earth,

such as atmospheric rivers

that are defined

as bands of moisture in the sky

that can discharge as much water

as many land rivers.

Following my invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

that occurred

on the Fourth of July 1989,

and that occurred in Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States,

the top publications

in petroleum engineering and mathematics credited I—Philip Emeagwali—

with the invention

of how to solve the toughest problems

arising in extreme-scale algebra

that must be solved

as a pre-condition for discovering

and recovering

otherwise elusive

crude oil and natural gas.

For fifteen years,

my supercomputer research on how to solve

the toughest problems

arising in large-scale algebraic computations

and how to solve them across

a new internet

that is a new ensemble of 65,536

commonly-available processors

that were identical

and that were equal distances apart

was criticized, scorned, and rejected.

My invention

of how to solve the most extreme-scale problems arising in algebra

and how to solve them across

my new internet

that is a new global network of

65,536 commodity processors

was only accepted

after the Fourth of July 1989,

the date that I invented it.

To the non-mathematician,

my mathematical invention is abstract

and impenetrable.

But my contributions

to calculus and algebra

made sense to the research mathematician.

For that reason, my contributions

to using the modern supercomputer

to solve the toughest problems

arising in calculus and algebra

was the cover stories

of top mathematics publications,

such as the May 1990 issue

of the SIAM News.

The SIAM News

is the flagship publication

of the mathematics community.

The SIAM News

is published by the Society for

Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

I was not on the cover

of top mathematics publications

because I was good looking.

I was on the cover

of top mathematics publications

because I contributed

new algebraic knowledge

to the existing body of knowledge

written in algebra textbooks,

namely, I invented

how to solve the toughest problems

arising in algebra and calculus

and invented how to solve them across

my new internet

that is a new global network of processors

that emulates one seamless, cohesive

new supercomputer.

Who Invented the Quadratic Equation?

My first introduction to algebra

was in mid-1964

in the fifth grade

in Agbor, in the Midwestern Region

of Nigeria.

My first algebra textbook

was written by an English schoolmaster

named Clement Vavasor “CV” Durell.

Who invented the quadratic equation

of algebra?

The quadratic equation

is one of the most important contributions

to mathematics

that was made by Africans

and made in Africa.

The quadratic equation

was first solved

in the Berlin Papyrus.

The Berlin Papyrus

was excavated in Africa

but renamed after Berlin, Germany.

In the history of mathematics,

it was the tradition

credit the mathematical knowledge

that was developed in Africa

to Europe.

Following that tradition

of historians of mathematics,

the Berlin Papyrus

was credited to the city of Berlin, Germany

and not named after

the city in Africa

that the Papyrus was excavated from.

The [quote unquote] “Berlin Papyrus”

was written in Africa

and written by Africans

and written between

three thousand seven hundred and twenty [3,720] years ago

and four thousand one hundred and eighty [4,180] years ago.

In that African Papyrus

that was written four thousand years ago,

the quadratic equation

was stated as

x squared plus y squared

equals 100

and y equals three-quarters

divided by the product of four and x.

Contributions of Philip Emeagwali to Algebra

The quadratic equation of algebra

that is in the homework assignment

of a 12-year-old

contains at least one unknown variable

that is squared.

That unknown variable

is often called x.

The 24 million system of

partial difference equations

of algebra

that I solved

on the Fourth of July 1989

and solved across a new internet

that is a new global network of

65,536 tightly-coupled,

commonly available processors

that made the news headlines

contained 24 million unknown variables.

That was a world record in algebra.

In my Fourth of July 1989

invention,

I computed across a new internet.

I visualized my new internet

as my new global network of

65,536 tightly-coupled processors

with each processor

operating its own operating system

and with each processor

having its own dedicated memory

that shared nothing with each other.

Each processor within my new internet

had one hundred and thirty-one thousand

and seventy-two [131,072] bytes of memory

that I used

for the integer and logical operations

that arose

from my algebraic computations.

I also used

two thousand and forty-eight [2,048] floating point co-processors.

I used those co-processors

to execute

my floating point arithmetical computations.

Each co-processor

had four megabytes of memory.

The frontier of extreme-scale algebra

is far beyond the quadratic equation

that contains two unknown variables

that was first solved

four thousand years ago

in Africa.

Extreme-scale algebra

arise during the general circulation modeling

that must be used to foresee

otherwise unforeseeable

global warmings.

Extreme-scale algebra

is used to discover and recover

otherwise elusive

crude oil and natural gas.

Extreme-scale algebra

is used to solve the toughest problems

arising in computational physics.

The most important quest

in algebra

was to theoretically

and experimentally invent

how to solve extreme-scale

tri-diagonal system of equations

of algebra

and how to solve those equations across

millions upon millions

of tightly-coupled processors

with each processor

operating its own operating system

and with each processor

having its own dedicated memory

that shared nothing with each other.

One reason I was the cover stories

of mathematics publications

was because

I mathematically discovered

that it’s impossible

to reduce a tri-diagonal system of equations

of algebra

and reduce it

to a mathematically equivalent

diagonal system of equations

of algebra.

I, de facto, circumvented that impossibility

by taking two steps backward

and to the granite core

of the physical problem

that is mathematically modeled,

namely, the extreme-scale

petroleum reservoir simulation,

that was governed by

a tri-diagonal system of equations

of algebra

that arose from discretizing

a system of partial differential equations

of modern calculus

and arose from approximating

that system

by a companion system

of partial difference equations

of a new algebra.

It was at that granite core

of the most excruciatingly-detailed

petroleum reservoir simulation

that I reformulated

the partial differential equations

that is a new calculus

that was not in any calculus textbook

that was printed in the 1970s or earlier.

The reason my contributions to mathematics

was the cover story

of the top mathematics publication, namely,

the May 1990 issue

of the SIAM News

of the Society of Industrial

and Applied Mathematics

was that I created a new calculus

and I did so

by inventing thirty-six [36] additional

partial derivative terms

of calculus.

In the old calculus

that is used to recover

otherwise unrecoverable

crude oil and natural gas,

only forty-five [45]

partial derivative terms

represented the Second Law of Motion

of physics

that was encoded

into the three-phased—crude oil,

injected water, and natural gas—

extreme-scaled

petroleum reservoir simulator.

My contributions

to the body of mathematical knowledge

called calculus and algebra are these:

I added the thirty-six [36]

partial derivative terms

of modern calculus

that I invented

to the forty-five [45]

partial derivative terms

that prior research mathematicians

invented.

And I did so to bring the total

partial derivative terms

to eighty-one (81).

In the advanced calculus textbooks

and in the old paradigm

of extreme-scale algebraic computations

arising from

petroleum reservoir simulations,

the governing system of coupled, non-linear,

time-dependent, and state-of-the-art

partial differential equations

of modern mathematics

was parabolic, instead of hyperbolic.

In my new paradigm

of extreme-scale algebraic computations,

that enabled me to

massively parallel process

and to process across a new internet

that I visualized

as a new global network of

65,536 tightly-coupled,

commonly available processors

that shared nothing with each other

and in that new paradigm

my system of coupled, non-linear,

time-dependent, and state-of-the-art

partial differential equations

of modern calculus is hyperbolic,

not parabolic as written in

calculus textbooks.

My contributions to calculus

was a paradigm shift because

such governing

partial differential equations

are described in all the textbooks

as parabolic, instead of hyperbolic.

They are described in calculus textbooks

on the multi-phase and multi-physics

porous media flow

of crude oil, injected water, and natural gas,

such as the crude oil and natural gas

flowing from the water injection wells

to the crude oil and natural gas wells

across the oilfields

of the Niger Delta region

of southeastern Nigeria.

Predicting Algebraic Error Propagation

Back in the early 1980s,

I was in College Park, Maryland.

I was a research computational mathematician in College Park.

The contributions to mathematics

that I made in the early 1980s

were the cover stories

of the top mathematics publications,

such as the May 1990 issue

of the SIAM News

that was published by

the Society of Industrial

and Applied Mathematics.

My quest

for new mathematical knowledge

was in the fields of calculus and

numerical analysis.

My greatest focus

was in the field of extreme-scaled

computational mathematics.

I focused on never-before-seen ways

of using the most abstract

and the most advanced

arithmetical knowledge

and using that knowledge

to solve the toughest problems

that arise in computational physics

that otherwise will be unsolveable.

My new field

—of never-before-seen

extreme-scaled computations—

was at the crossroad

between calculus and algebra

and between arithmetic

and the computer.

I redefined my numerical analysis

as between

the singular processor

that computes sequentially

and my ensemble of processors

that computes in parallel,

or that solves many problems

at once.

In 1989, it made the news headlines

that an African supercomputer wizard

in the United States

had invented

how to use 65,536 processors

to solve as many problems in parallel.

I am that African supercomputer scientist

that was in the news

onward of 1989.

I was in the news because I invented

how to use one billion processors

to solve one billion

initial-boundary value problems

of calculus

and how to solve them in parallel

and, specifically, how to compute across

a new internet

that is a new global network of

two-raised-to-power sixteen

commodity-off-the-shelf processors

that were married together

as one seamless, cohesive

massively parallel processing supercomputer

and married together

by sixteen times as many

email wires.

The mathematical analysis

that was at the theoretical foundation

of my extreme-scale

computational mathematics

and that preceded

my invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

is called

the stability analysis

of finite difference discretizations

of partial differential equations

of modern calculus.

Stability analysis

was the extremely rigorous

and the analytical procedure

that I used to derive a priori error estimate

of the rate of propagation

of initial errors

and the rate as I computed forward in time

and computed within each processor

and communicated across

my new ensemble of 65,536

tightly-coupled, commodity processors

with each processor

operating its own operating system

and with each processor

having its own dedicated memory

that shared nothing with each other.

After going through some dense

and abstract stability analyses

in the early 1980s

and after conducting companion computational experiments,

I mathematically discovered

that explicit finite difference

algebraic approximations

of the governing system of

partial differential equations

of modern calculus

that include the thirty-six (36)

new partial derivative terms

that I invented

allow longer computational time-steps

which, in turn, makes my calculations faster.

That mathematical invention

was how I greatly reduced

the vexing time-step limit

that textbooks on computational physics

describe as the Courant Condition.

That Courant Condition

is the necessary condition

for the convergence

of the numerical solution

of an explicit

partial difference equation

to the analytical solution

of the original partial differential equation

that it was approximating.

That mathematical invention

was how I bypassed

the empirical Darcy’s formula

that was outdated and invented

back in 1856.

That mathematical invention

was how I replaced

a system of nine algebraic Darcy’s equations

that must be used by the petroleum industry to describe

the subterranean motions

of multi-phased fluids.

I invented and replaced

those nine algebraic Darcy’s equations

with my more rigorous

system of nine partial differential equations

of a new calculus

that I invented

from first principles,

or from the Second Law of Motion

of physics.

Henry Darcy’s Law

is a statement in the fluid dynamics

of flows across a porous medium.

Henry Darcy’s Law

states that the velocities of crude oil, injected water,

and natural gas flowing across

the permeable Niger Delta oilfields

of southeastern Nigeria

is due to the difference in pressure.

Henry Darcy’s Law

states that the velocities

of the crude oil, injected water,

and natural gas

are proportional to the pressure gradients

in the direction

of the flows of crude oil, injected water, and natural gas.

That mathematical invention,

called Philip Emeagwali’s Equations,

was how I bypassed

the vexing

eight processor limit

known as Amdahl’s Law

that limits the number of processors

that should be incorporated

into massively parallel processing supercomputers.

Contributions of Philip Emeagwali to Algebra

The first automatic

and sequential processing supercomputer

that was programmable

was invented in 1946.

That first supercomputer

was invented

to be programmed to solve

a large system of equations

of algebra

that arose from the

finite difference discretizations

of ordinary differential equations

of modern calculus

that, in turn, encoded

a set of laws of physics.

What made the sequential processing supercomputer of 1946 unique

was that it computed automatically

and was, therefore, programmable.

Fast forward twenty-eight [28] years

from that first supercomputer,

and to June 20, 1974,

in Corvallis, Oregon,

and I was programming

the first supercomputer

that could execute

over one million instructions per second.

I used that first supercomputer

to solve the largest-scale problems

arising in modern algebra.

Fast forward fifteen [15] years,

and to the Fourth of July 1989,

I was in a dozen supercomputer centers

across the United States

and I was programming

the first massively parallel processing supercomputer

that could execute

billions of calculations

and execute them across

my ensemble of up to

65,536 tightly-coupled processors.

Why is Philip Emeagwali Famous?

My invention

of a new supercomputer

put me in the news headlines

and in the June 20, 1990 issue

of the Wall Street Journal.

I was the cover story

of the June 1990 issue

of the SIAM News.

The SIAM News

is the top mathematics publication

and is published by

the Society of Industrial

and Applied Mathematics.

The cover stories in the SIAM News

report new inventions in mathematics

and they are written by

research mathematicians

and written for research mathematicians.

In the cover story of the SIAM News

of June 1990,

it was reported that I—Philip Emeagwali—

had mathematically invented

how to solve the toughest problems

arising in modern calculus

and arising in extreme-scale algebra

and invented how to solve them across

a new ensemble of 65,536

commonly available processors.

I invented

how to use that new supercomputer

to solve many problems at once

and to solve the largest-scaled problems

arising in modern algebra.

Contributions of Philip Emeagwali to Physics

On the Fourth of July 1989,

the state-of-the-art of that toughest problem in modern algebra

was a system of 24 million equations

of algebra

that arose from

my finite difference discretizations

of a system of partial differential equations

that I invented

that mathematically encoded

a set of laws of physics

that governs

the subterranean motions of crude oil, injected water, and natural gas

that flows one mile-deep

underneath the surface of the Earth

and that flows from water injection wells

towards

crude oil and natural gas production wells.

I visualized my new instrument

of computational physics

as a new internet

that I defined

as my new global network

of 65,536 tightly-coupled

commodity-off-the-shelf processors

with each processor

operating its own operating system

and with each processor

having its own dedicated memory

that shared nothing with each other.

I visualized my new internet

as a new instrument

for solving

the most extreme-scaled

problems arising in algebra

and for solving them

as one seamless, cohesive unit

that is a new supercomputer de facto.

The defining feature

of my invention

of that new internet

was that the new technology

enabled me to compute synchronously

and to communicate automatically

and to do so via emails

that I sent to and received from

two-to-power-sixteen

sixteen-bit long email addresses.

Each of my 64 binary thousand

email addresses

had no @ sign or dot com suffix.

Sometimes, the Impossible is Possible

Back in 1989,

no author of any mathematics textbook

understood the concept of

solving many problems at once,

or in parallel.

Back in 1989,

Seymour Cray

was the spokesman

for the supercomputer community.

If Seymour Cray’s granddaughter

came to him for help

with her homework assignment

on how to solve

many mathematical problems at once,

Seymour Cray

would not have been able

to help her

to solve her problem in parallel.

The reason was that Seymour Cray

ardently believed that

the supercomputer technology

that I invented

that enables parallel processing across

my ensemble of 65,536

tightly-coupled processors

was impossible and science fiction.

A Day in the Life of a Black Mathematician

Quest of Philip Emeagwali for New Mathematical Physics

I was an apprentice supercomputer scientist

for forty-five [45] years.

After investing forty-five [45] years

in the craft of supercomputing,

I had the command of materials

that I needed to deliver

my supercomputer lectures

in prose and poetry,

rather than on blackboards and power points.

After nearly half a century

of supercomputing,

I knew one or two things

about supercomputers

that nobody else knew.

That new knowledge

that I alone had

was how to solve the toughest problems

arising in physics

and how to solve them at once.

My mathematical maturity

grew from the algebraic representation

of the Second Law of Motion

of physics

that was written as

F=ma,

or Force equals

mass times acceleration.

That iconic formula, F=ma,

is the most important formula

in mathematics, science, and engineering.

I learned that formula, F=ma,

back in June 1970

and I learned it in the eighth grade

of Christ the King College,

Onitsha, East Central State, Nigeria.

Contributions of Philip Emeagwali to Mathematical Physics

Fast forward a dozen years,

I had taken as my second home

half a dozen mathematics

and physics departments

that were across the United States.

My second home

was mathematics and physics departments

from Corvallis (Oregon)

to Washington (District of Columbia)

to College Park (Maryland).

For my first sixteen years

in the United States,

I made those mathematics

and physics departments

my second home.

After sixteen years

in mathematics and physics departments,

I had grown intellectually

to become a research

computational mathematician

and to become a research

computational physicist.

That intellectual maturity

as a research mathematician

and as a research physicist

was what enabled me

to discover thirty-six [36] critical errors

in the advanced textbooks

in the mathematical physics

that governs

the flow of crude oil, injected water,

and natural gas

that flows a mile-deep

inside production oilfields.

I corrected those thirty-six [36]

critical mathematical errors

by inventing

thirty-six [36] partial derivative terms

that ensured that F=ma

and that ensured that

the equality holds

within a system of nine new

partial differential equations

that I invented

and that encoded

the Second Law of Motion

of physics

and that encoded that law

for three-dimensional, three-phase flows

within porous media,

such as flow of crude oil, injected water,

and natural gas across

the Oloibiri Oil Field

of Bayelsa State of southeastern Nigeria

that was the first oilfield

that was discovered

in West Africa back in 1956.

Those thirty-six [36]

partial derivative terms encoded

the thirty-six [36]

temporal and spatial components

of the inertial forces

in the three phases

of crude oil, injected water, and natural gas

that were flowing along

the temporal

and the three spatial directions

of my new nine

partial differential equations

of modern calculus.

I continued across

my ensemble of 64 binary thousand

tightly-coupled,

commodity-off-the-shelf processors

that shared nothing with each other

and I continued and I invented

my new nine partial differential equations.

I discretized the latter

from its formulation

as a differential problem

of modern calculus

to the extreme-scaled problem

of modern algebra.

I did so to enable me

to more accurately encode

the invisible subterranean motion

of water

that is pumped into water injection wells

and pumped because

water is cheaper than oil and natural gas

and is, therefore, used to push

oil and natural gas

towards production wells.

Things I Did in the Nation’s Capital

For me, the answer

to the Grand Challenge Problem

of mathematics and supercomputing

demanded my sixteen-year-long journey, onward of June 20, 1974

from Corvallis, Oregon, United States

through Los Alamos, New Mexico,

United States

to receiving the top prize in supercomputing

from Silicon Valley, California.

A research pure mathematician

is re-searching a new proof

of a deep and abstract theorem.

I sojourned

to an unknown world of technology.

In that sojourn, I used

sixteen supercomputer-hopefuls

as my guideposts along the new pathways

to the never-before-seen

global network of processors

that is a new internet

that is a new supercomputer

and that is a new computer.

A research applied mathematician

is seeking

a new and better mathematical description,

such as a system of coupled, non-linear,

time-dependent, and state-of-the-art

partial differential equations

that governs

an initial-boundary value problem

of modern calculus.

A research computational mathematician

is seeking

a faster computational model,

that explains or predicts

a phenomenon

that is otherwise impossible

to explain or predict.

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s,

I was a research

computational mathematician

that lived in room eight hundred

and seventy-seven [877]

of Meridian Hill Hall

at twenty-six hundred and one [2601]

16th Street

that was at the corner of

16th Street and Euclid Street

of Adams-Morgan neighborhood

of northwest Washington, D.C.

On a Friday evening, I might have dinner

with my future-wife, Dale.

Our favorite place

was an Ethiopian restaurant

that was a short walk

down 18th street

from Columbia Road

in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood.

My other favorite places are the small cafes

along “T” and “U” streets,

and the Meridian Hill Park Drum Circle.

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s,

I was most likely to be seen

in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C,

jogging across the Smithsonian’s

National Zoo of Washington, D.C.

at 6 a.m. in the mornings.

I also walked or jogged across

the Adams-Morgan neighborhood,

or across the Dupont Circle neighborhood,

or across the Foggy Bottom neighborhood,

or across Rock Creek Park.

The 12-mile-long Rock Creek Park

extends from the Potomac River

to the border of Maryland.

Foggy Bottom

is named after the fog

that clings to the neighborhood

in the morning.

Foggy Bottom

is a late 18th-century neighborhood

and is one of the oldest neighborhoods

in Washington, D.C.

The Dupont Circle

has a famous traffic circle

and a water fountain at its center.

For me, the Dupont Circle drum circle

and its array of late afternoon drummers and dancers

was like a church.

Fast forward to the late 1990s,

and from the drum circles

of Washington, D.C.

to West African drummers

in Baltimore, Maryland.

My wife Dale and I took lessons

on African dance and rhythm

and from a charismatic griot

and choreographer

named Kibibi Ajanku.

Kibibi Ajanku

was the founding mother

of the Sankofa Dance Theatre

of Baltimore, Maryland.

My Night Life in the Nation’s Capital

From October 1978 to May 1981,

I lived a short walk

from the Kilimanjaro Restaurant

and Nightclub

that was started in 1982.

Kilimanjaro Restaurant

and Nightclub was throbbing with

live African music and reggae.

Kilimanjaro Restaurant

and Nightclub

was in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood

of Washington, D.C.

In the early 1980s,

I lived at 1915

East-West Highway,

apartment three zero three [303],

Silver Spring, Maryland.

And I walked the short distance

to the railway subway station

called Metro Station.

That underground railway station

was at the boundary

between Silver Spring, Maryland

and Washington, District of Columbia.

On weekdays, I took the

Washington, D.C. rapid transit system

to Foggy Bottom Station

that is west of the White House

and in downtown Washington.

Foggy Bottom

was a very short walk

to the computer center

where I programmed fast computers

and used them to solve

the most computation-intensive

initial-boundary value problems

of modern calculus

that was the mathematical foundation

of computational fluid dynamics.

My Supercomputing in Washington, DC

In the early 1980s,

my massively parallel processing supercomputer research interests

were multidisciplinary.

I investigated

computation-intensive problems

arising in mathematical biology,

such as the evolution equations.

I investigated

fluid-structure interactions

within the cardiovascular system.

And I investigated

hydrodynamical computations

that included

the simulation of the propagation

of tsunami waves

arising from earthquakes.

I was an unorthodox

research supercomputer scientist.

The mathematician’s blackboard

that is scribbled with matrices,

tensors, summation indices,

and partial derivatives

is not the playground

of a traditional computer scientist.

A traditional computer scientist

that challenged me

on the mathematician’s blackboard

was like Daniel

challenging the lion in the lion’s den.

A Day in My Life

By the late afternoons of the early 1980s,

I become mentally exhausted

from programming computers

to solve extreme-scaled

partial difference equations

of modern algebra

that arose from and approximated

partial differential equations

of mathematical physics.

In the late weekday afternoon

of the early 1980s,

I often walked to the nearby

Embassy of Nigeria

to read the Daily Times newspaper

and socialize with Embassy staff

and Nigerian visitors.

At about 4:30 p.m.,

I will be playing tennis

at the nearby four lighted tennis courts

that were at the intersection

of “O” Street northwest

and “23rd” street northwest.

If it’s too cold for outdoor tennis,

I will swim for two hours

at the Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool

that was located at

600 22nd Street northwest,

Washington, D.C.

Or I might play indoor tennis

or play squash

in the indoor courts

at the same address.

About one Friday evening a month,

I will spend a few hours

in the nearby swanky Zanzibar Night Club.

Zanzibar

maintained its image

as the classy African

and international night club

of Washington, D.C.

Zanzibar

enforced a strict dress code.

To be admitted into Zanzibar,

gentlemen must wear a dignified

national dress,

such as the Nigerian agbada,

or wear a suit

along with a collared shirt,

a tie, and dress shoes.

In the mid-1980s,

Zanzibar Night Club

was then in the

Foggy Bottom neighborhood

of Washington, D.C.

Dairy of a Black Meteorologist

Back in 1981,

I was doing more rigorous

mathematical analyses

than I was programming supercomputers.

I did my mathematical analyses

inside the Gramax Heliport Building

in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The Gramax Heliport Building

was an approved landing pad

for helicopters.

In the early 1980s,

the Gramax Heliport Building

at 8060 13th Street, Silver Spring, Maryland

was the headquarters

of the U.S. National Weather Service.

I was at the National Weather Service

because of my interest

in using the fastest supercomputers

to solve

the primitive equations of meteorology.

The primitive equations

were a system of coupled, non-linear,

time-dependent, and state-of-the-art

partial differential equations

of modern calculus.

The primitive equations

are used to model the flow of air

and moisture across

the surface of the Earth.

I was at the U.S. National Weather Service

because the Gramax Building

was a walking distance

from the Silver Spring Metro station,

in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The Gramax Building

was also a brisk walk

from my residence

at 1915 East-West Highway,

Apartment 303, Silver Spring, Maryland.

A few months earlier

and in early 1981,

I was still living at Room 877,

of Meridian Hill Hall

that was at the corner of

16th and Euclid Streets,

of the Adams-Morgan neighborhood,

of northwest, Washington,

District of Columbia.

My Struggles to Invent New Algebra

Inside the Gramax Building,

I wrote and rewrote and re-calculated

a hundred versions

of my Taylor’s expansion

of various finite difference discretizations

of the system of nine

coupled, non-linear, time-dependent,

and state-of-the-art

partial differential equations

of modern calculus,

called Philip Emeagwali’s Equations

that governed

my initial-boundary value problem

that was at the mathematical foundation

of my computational fluid dynamics

codes.

I invented those nine

partial differential equations

and they are my contributions

to mathematics.

As a research numerical analyst,

my research goal was to invent

nine corresponding

finite difference algorithms

or discretization schemes,

and finite difference

algebraic approximations

of my nine partial differential equations,

called Philip Emeagwali’s Equations.

I discretized

my new partial differential equations

and I did so

in a manner that will enable me

to first

define and email

their algebraic approximations

as well as their companion codes

and email them

as 65,536

petroleum reservoir simulations

or email them as 65,536

extreme-scale

computational physics problems

that made the news headlines

when I invented

how to solve them

in parallel

and solve them across

my new global network of

65,536 tightly-coupled,

commodity-off-the-shelf processors.

Each of my 65,536 processors

operated its own operating system.

And each processor

had its own dedicated memory

that shared nothing with each other.

Those identical processors

were married together

by 1,048,576 identical email wires

and married together

as one seamless, cohesive unit

that is a new supercomputer

that encircled the globe

in the way the internet does

in sixteen-dimensional hyperspace.

My invention was not a new computer per se

but was a new internet de facto.

My Struggles to Invent New Mathematics

My laborious Taylor’s expansions

of 1981

were how I approximated

the value of each of my solution

by taking the sum of its derivatives

at a given point.

Taylor’s expansions yielded

my a priori error estimates

that I used to pre-select

the most, hopefully, accurate

finite difference algebraic approximations

of the nine partial differential equations,

called Philip Emeagwali’s Equations,

that I invented.

I contributed to mathematical knowledge

and my contribution to algebra and calculus

was the cover story

of top mathematics publications,

such as the June 1990 issue

of the SIAM News.

One fact that I never mentioned before

was that I often pursued

false mathematical trails.

Back in 1981,

I was unreasonably obsessed

with the Hopscotch algorithms

as a numerical solution of

partial differential equations.

I was obsessed with Hopscotch methods

because I was unreasonably optimistic

and believed that

Hopscotch methods are hybrid

explicit-implicit methods

that could be very accurate

and that Hopscotch methods

could enable me to email

my initial-boundary value problems

and email them across

a new internet

that I visualized

as a new global network of

65,536 commodity-off-the-shelf processors.

After a year of seemingly endless mathematical analyses

of Hopscotch algorithms

and computational experiments

of Hopscotch

computational fluid dynamics codes

I discovered that

I was following a false trail

and that hopscotch algorithms

were over hyped.

After wasting extraordinary amount of time,

I resettled

on explicit finite difference approximations.

In the end,

I invented explicit finite difference

algebraic approximations

of the nine partial differential equations,

called Philip Emeagwali’s Equations,

that I contributed to modern calculus.

That was how I scribbled new calculus

that had never been scribbled

on any blackboard before.

That was how I coded new algebra

that had never been coded

by any computational algebraist before.

That was how I saw a new supercomputer

that had never been seen

by any supercomputer scientist before.

Father of Large-Scale Algebra

It’s often said that

parallel processing across

millions upon millions

of tightly-coupled commodity-off-the-shelf processors

that shared nothing with each other

is the biggest advance in computing

since the programmable computer

was invented

back in 1946.

In my country of birth, Nigeria,

a million billion trillion

floating-point arithmetical computations

are massively parallel processed

each day

and massively parallel processed

to discover and recover

the otherwise elusive

crude oil and natural gas

that are buried a mile deep

in the Niger-Delta oilfields of Nigeria.

As a discoverer-hopeful, back in 1974,

in Corvallis, Oregon, United States,

I asked a big question

that had never been answered before.

That overarching question was:

“How do we parallel process

across a new internet

that is a new global network of

64 binary thousand computers?”

If that big question

that I asked in 1974

was already answered,

or if parallel processing

was already discovered,

my invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

will not have been cover stories

and would not have been recorded

in the June 20, 1990 issue

of The Wall Street Journal.

If the answer to that big

overarching question

was known,

I would not have gotten telephone calls

from the likes of Steve Jobs

who wanted to know

how I invented

the massively parallel processing supercomputer

that is faster than

the vector processing supercomputer.

Steve Jobs wanted to know how I recorded 3.1 billion calculations per second.

As an aside, my invention

of parallel processing

that occurred on the Fourth of July 1989

inspired Steve Jobs

to use four processors

that processed in parallel

to also attain a speed of 3.1 billion

calculations per second

and record that speed

in his first Apple personal supercomputers,

called the Power Mac G4.

Steve Jobs introduced

his personal supercomputer

at the Seybold conference

that took place in San Francisco

on August 31, 1999.

Like the modern supercomputer,

the fastest speed in your computer

are coming from parallel processing.

The new supercomputer knowledge

that made the news headlines

was that I—Philip Emeagwali—had invented

how to massively parallel process

and that I invented the technology

that drives the modern supercomputer

and invented the technology

on the Fourth of July 1989

and invented the technology

in Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States.

I invented

the parallel processing supercomputer

technology

to enable me to solve

the toughest problems

arising in extreme-scale algebra.

Such mathematical physics problems arise

when trying to discover and recover

crude oil and natural gas

and do so from the Niger-Delta oilfields

of my country of birth, Nigeria.

My quest for the new algebra

that is my contribution to algebra

began with the arithmetic times table

that I memorized in 1960

in first grade

at Saint Patrick’s Primary School, Sapele,

in the then Western Region

of the then British West African colony

of Nigeria.

That times table

went to only twelve times twelve.

That times table

was near the beginning of knowledge

of arithmetic.

On the Fourth of July 1989, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States,

I—Philip Emeagwali—mathematically invented

how to massively parallel process

arithmetic times tables

and parallel process them across

a new internet

that is a new global network of processors.

I invented

new algorithms, or new instructions,

that told each processor

what to compute within itself

and what to communicate to its up to sixteen nearest-neighboring processors.

Since the first programmable supercomputer was invented in 1946,

each supercomputer manufactured

was faithful to its primary mission, namely, to solve the most extreme-scale problems

arising in computational physics

and to increase productivity,

reduce time-to-solution,

and reduce time-to-market.

Supercomputing is mathematics-intensive.

For that reason,

most supercomputer scientists are, in part, research computational mathematicians.

In supercomputing

and in computational physics, to discover

is to make the impossible-to-solve

possible-to-solve.

The first person, or the discoverer,

makes the impossible possible,

and thereafter, everybody knows that

parallel processing

is no longer a waste of everybody’s time.

I—Philip Emeagwali—was credited

for making the invention

of massively parallel processing,

the technology that makes supercomputers

fastest.

I invented

parallel processing

when the supercomputer technology

was scorned, ridiculed, and rejected

by the likes of Steve Jobs.

I invented

parallel processing

when the supercomputer technology

was presumed

to be untestable and even wrong.

My discovery

that the impossible-to-solve

arising in extreme-scale

algebraic computations

is possible-to-solve

across a new internet

that is a new supercomputer

and a new computer

was recorded in the June 20, 1990 issue

of the Wall Street Journal.

A Black Mathematician and His Contributions to Mathematics

A Black Mathematician and His Contributions to Mathematics

Philip Emeagwali Lecture 180128

Visit http://emeagwali.com for complete transcripts of 100+ lectures.

Video: https://YouTube.com/emeagwali

Podcast: https://SoundCloud.com/emeagwali

Contributions of Philip Emeagwali to Algebra

The Problems Narrative Identity

I’m Philip Emeagwali.

The nine partial differential equations

of modern calculus

—called Emeagwali’s equations—

began as the Second Law of Motion

of physics.

I encoded that Second Law of Motion

into eighty-one (81) partial derivative terms

of Emeagwali’s system of equations

that governs the multiphase flow

of crude oil, injected water, and natural gas

that was flowing a mile-deep

and across a production oilfield,

such as the Oloibiri Oilfield

of Nigeria

that was the first oilfield discovered

in West Africa

and discovered in 1956.

As a research computational mathematician,

I insisted that

the petroleum reservoir simulator

must obey the laws of physics

at all times and simulations.

My contributions

to mathematical knowledge

include the mathematical discovery

that the system of nine

coupled, non-linear, time-dependent, and state-of-the-art partial differential equations

in the calculus textbooks

of the petroleum industry

were not equating to the reality

within the oilfield

the partial differential equations represent.

For that reason, I invented

the nine Emeagwali’s equations

that contained thirty-six [36]

partial derivative terms

that equated

with the four physical forces

that exists

within all production oilfields.

Along those lines, I also had to invent

nine finite difference algebraic algorithms

that were not constrained

by in inverted commas “dependency”

and constrained

when executing across

my new internet

that was outlined by an ensemble of

65,536 commodity-off-the-shelf processors

that were identical

and that were equal distances

apart.

A necessary condition

to making my experimental discovery

of the Fourth of July 1989

was that I simultaneously send

email messages

to all 65,536 processors

on my new internet

and that I synchronously receive

my email replies

from all 65,536 processors.

That massively parallel processing

supercomputer invention

took a narrative identity all its own, namely,

I—the storyteller—became the story

and the subject of school reports.

My Contributions to Algebra

Nine in ten supercomputer cycles

are executed

while solving extreme-scaled

systems of equations

of algebra.

On the Fourth of July 1989,

the US Independence Day,

I experimentally discovered

how to finesse my

64 binary thousand identical

and commodity processors

to email each other

and to work together

to reduce the time-to-solution

of extreme-scale systems of equations

of algebra

and to reduce that time-to-solution

from 65,536 days, or 180 years,

on one processor

to just one day across

an ensemble of 65,536 processors.

I experimentally discovered

how to compute quickly and accurately

and how to make the impossible-to-solve

systems of equations

of extreme-scale algebra

possible-to-solve

and how to use that new knowledge

of massively parallel processing

extreme-scaled problems

in algebra

and doing so to build digital replicas

of petroleum reservoirs

and the Earth’s climate.

I invented a new supercomputer

that encircled the globe

in the way the internet does

and that could be used to solve

never-before-solved problems

in algebra.

That new supercomputer

enables the computational mathematician

and computational physicist

to answer previously unanswerable questions

in extreme-scale algebra

that is the recurring decimal

in their grand challenge problems.

By definition, algebra

is the generalization of arithmetic.

In high school algebra,

two letters represent two numbers.

In the supercomputer algebra

that arises from

trying to discover and recover

otherwise elusive

crude oil and natural gas,

one trillion letters must represent

one trillion numbers

arising from a system of

one trillion equations

of algebra.

Those one trillion equations

are evenly distributed across

millions of processors

that, in turn, solves the trillion equations

in parallel,

or solves them

by computing one million calculations

at once.

In modern supercomputing,

parallel processing

is the disruptive technology

that displaced sequential processing,

a technology that established itself

for half a century.

Between sequential processing

that was experimentally invented

in 1946,

and parallel processing

that I experimentally invented

in 1989,

was vector processing

that was the sustaining technology

that yielded incremental gains

in the supercomputer speeds

of the 1970s and ‘80s.

My world’s fastest

supercomputer algebraic calculations

made the news headlines

and were highlighted

in the June 20, 1990 issue

of the Wall Street Journal.

A week later,

the computer and information technology writer, Judith Axler Turner,

wrote in the June 27, 1990 issue

of The Chronicle of Higher Education

that I

[quote]

“took on an enormously difficult problem…

solved it alone,

has won computation’s top prize,

captured in the past

only by seasoned research teams.”

[unquote]

I was in the news

in 1989

because I experimentally discovered

how to reduce the performance abyss

between the sequential

or the vector processing supercomputer

and the massively parallel processing supercomputer.

I did not experimentally discover

parallel processing

by merely tweaking

sequential processing codes.

I discovered

the parallel processing supercomputer

from first principles,

or from the laws of physics,

and from the partial differential equations

of calculus

that encoded those laws,

and from the partial difference equations

of algebra

that approximated

those partial differential equations.

Algebra

is the way the supercomputer

experience calculus.

I experimentally discovered

parallel processing

by going back to the laws of physics

that were encoded into the system of

partial differential equations

of modern calculus

that, in turn, were discretized

to yield trillions upon trillions

of a system of equations

of algebra

that I had to solve in parallel.

My Contributions to Computational Mathematics

My contributions

to computational mathematics

are these:

I mathematically and experimentally discovered

how to compute and solve

initial-boundary value problems

that were previously impossible-to-solve.

I discovered

how to execute excruciatingly-detailed petroleum reservoir simulations.

Such extreme-scale simulations, in turn,

enable petroleum engineers

to discover and recover

otherwise elusive crude oil and natural gas.

I discovered

how to foresee otherwise unforeseeable global warming

and how to do so

by executing

extreme-scale general circulation models

and executing them

at a never before-seen-resolution

and executing them

across

my ensemble of processors

that is a new internet

and that is a new supercomputer de facto

but that is not a computer per se.

The modern parallel processing supercomputer

is not the sequential processing computer

of the old sense

and of the 1980s and earlier.

Each modern parallel processing supercomputer

is defined by the configuration

of the ensemble of processors

that outlined it.

I invented a new configuration of processors that defined a never-before-seen supercomputer

that I named the Cosmic Supercomputer

and that outlined a never-before-seen internet

that I described

as a HyperBall global network of processors

that is described by the book

“History of the Internet”

and described as a small copy

of the Internet

and described as the contribution

of Philip Emeagwali

to the invention of the internet.

My knowledge and experience

with the supercomputer

began on June 20, 1974

at a Computer Center

in Corvallis, Oregon, United States.

The computer has changed

since it was invented in 1946

and invented

as automatic, programmable,

and processing sequentially.

But the way we define the computer

has not changed.

In 1946 and now, we still define

the computer

as the tool that enables a person

to execute the fastest computations.

Back in 1974, the prevailing dogma

in supercomputing

was that parallel processing

will forever remain a huge waste of everybody’s time.

The paradigm shift

from serial computing to parallel computing

occurred in 1989.

There were three reasons

I couldn’t make my 1989

experimental discovery

of parallel processing

in 1974.

First, I didn’t have, in 1974,

the intellectual maturity

—across computational physics,

across abstract calculus,

across large-scale algebraic computations,

across extreme-scale floating-point arithmetical computations,

and across

message-passing communication.

I acquired that intellectual maturity

during the next sixteen years,

onward of March 25, 1974,

of fulltime study

and supercomputer research.

The second reason I couldn’t discover parallel processing

in 1974

was that I didn’t have

a global network of

64 binary thousand processors

that I needed

to use re-confirm

my theoretical discovery

of parallel processing.

I can only experimentally re-confirm

my theoretical discovery across

those 65,536 processors.

The third reason I couldn’t discover

parallel processing

in 1974

was that the fields of calculus, computing, and email communication

—grew enough to enable me

to do my experiments

and do it across

a small copy of the internet

that’s a global network of

64 binary thousand processors.

But, more importantly,

my original inspiration

was to discover a new technology

—namely, a small copy of the Internet

that emulates a new supercomputer.

That new technology

that is a new supercomputer

is a new instrument

of extreme-scale computational physics

that’s indispensable

in the quest for crude oil and natural gas;

that’s indispensable

in foreseeing otherwise unforeseeable

global warming;

and that’s indispensable

in vast and sundry problems

in extreme-scale computational physics.

That the fastest supercomputer

cost as much as the budget of a small nation is a measure of its wide applications

across the sciences and society.

Parallel processing

is the technological engine

that powers both the slowest computer

and the fastest supercomputer.

My discovery

of practical parallel processing

earned me the highest prize

in supercomputing

made the news headlines

in 1989

and was newsworthy because

it opened up the new fields

of seeking parallel solutions

of initial-boundary value problems

that occurs

from mathematics to medicine,

from biology to chemistry,

and from astronomy to physics.

When you’re inventing something

that thing is yours.

When you’ve invented that thing,

you give that thing to posterity

and that thing is no longer yours.

For instance, my experimental discovery

of the massively parallel processing

supercomputer

was the cover story

of technical publications

such as the May 1990 issue

of the SIAM News,

of the Society of Industrial

and Applied Mathematics.

The SIAM News

is the flagship bi-monthly news journal

of record

of the research mathematics community

that is half a million mathematicians

strong.

Complex Calculus and Large-Scale Algebra

At the Christ the King College,

Onitsha, of the then East Central State

of Nigeria, of 1970,

I was the rising star

in physics and calculus.

For that reason, everybody

at Christ the King College,

Onitsha,

called me “Calculus,” rather than “Philip.”

At Christ the King College, Onitsha,

my physics textbook was titled:

“Advanced Level Physics.”

That physics textbook was co-authored by

Michael Nelkon and Philip Parker.

Those that knew me by the name “Calculus”

at Christ the King College, Onitsha, Nigeria, were not surprised

that I won a scholarship

that was dated September 10, 1973.

That scholarship

made it possible for me to arrive

in the United States

on Sunday March 24, 1974.

I spent my first night

in the United States alone.

I spent that first night

in 36 Butler Hall,

Monmouth, Oregon.

An earlier turning point for me

—as a mathematician—was in June 1970

at age 15

inside a bookstore

near Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha, East Central State, Nigeria.

The bookstore was a short distance

from Zik’s Roundabout, Onitsha.

Inside that bookstore,

I paid the then unheard of

one pound and five shillings

for a 568-page blue hardbound book

that was titled:

“An Introduction

to the Infinitesimal Calculus.”

The calculus book was subtitled

“With Applications to Mechanics

and Physics.”

The calculus book was written by

G.W. [George William] Caunt

and published by Oxford University Press.

The frontier of knowledge

of physics, calculus, and algebra

are the intellectual swords

that I used in my supercomputer quest

for the then uncharted territory

now known as the

massively parallel processing

supercomputer.

That terra incognita of knowledge

is where the fastest supercomputer exists

and where I discovered

how to harness

my ensemble of processors

as the building blocks

of a new supercomputer.

That new supercomputer

is the precursor

to the modern parallel processing supercomputer.

I discovered

how to harness those processors

to solve extreme-scale problems

in algebra

that arose in computational physics.

I was the first person

to witness the world’s fastest

algebraic computation

that occurred across a new internet

that was a global network of

65,536 processors.

I witnessed that fastest

algebraic computations

at 10:15 in the morning

Washington, D.C. Time

Tuesday Fourth of July 1989,

the US Independence Day.

That experimental discovery

represents a new paradigm

in the history of algebra.

At first, I couldn’t believe

my fastest algebraic computations

and I believed that I had made a mistake

in the way I operated

the internal timer

that I used to time the speed

of my new supercomputer.

Everybody said

I had made an embarrassing mistake

but everybody

was embarrassingly mistaken.

At my mathematical core,

I’m also an extreme-scale algebraist.

It made the news headlines

in 1989

that I—Philip Emeagwali—discovered

how to solve the largest system

of linear equations of algebra

and how to solve them

at the fastest speeds

but with the slowest processors.

What I contributed

to extreme-scale, fast

computational mathematics

was the cover story

of top publications in mathematics.

I discovered

how to reduce the toughest problems

in calculus

to their acceptable approximations

in algebra.

I discovered those algebraic approximations

as the most extreme-scale problems

in computational algebra.

That mathematical discovery

led me to the most computation-intensive problems in floating-point arithmetic

that I could only solve, by first,

discovering

how to massively parallel process

and how to do so across

my small copy of the Internet

that’s a global network of

64 binary thousand processors.

Let’s put my mathematical discovery

in historical perspective.

The quadratic equation

of your high school algebra

had one unknown and two solutions,

just as the quadratic equation

x squared equals nine

has the two solutions

minus three and plus three.

And your high school, small-scale

algebra textbooks

didn’t go beyond a system of

three equations

that had to be manually solved

for three unknowns.

But today, I’m wondering

how can I massively parallel compute

a system of a million billion trillion

equations of algebra

and do so

to compute at the fastest speeds

for answers that comprise of knowing

a million billion trillion unknowns.

That’s impossible to scribble

across all the blackboards in the world.

That’s impossible to store

within one motherboard.

I discovered that massively

parallel supercomputing

may make it possible to someday solve for

a million billion trillion unknowns

and, help discover and recover

otherwise elusive

crude oil and natural gas.

More than half of the crude oil and natural gas discovered

in Nigeria

are unrecoverable.

Around the world, thousands of oilfields

have been abandoned

because more than half of the crude oil and natural gas

are unrecoverable.

The Oloibiri oilfield,

of the Niger-Delta region,

was Nigeria’s first oil field.

The Oloibiri oilfield

was discovered in 1958.

The Oloibiri oilfield

was abandoned in 1978.

The Oloibiri oilfield

was abandoned twenty years

after it was discovered.

The Oloibiri oilfield

was abandoned with about 70 percent

of its crude oil and natural gas

deemed unrecoverable.

My application of extreme-scale algebra

in extreme-scale, multi physics scenarios

of petroleum reservoir simulation

is the most important application

of algebra in Nigeria.

Algebra

is an instrument of poverty alleviation.

On Being a Non-Conformist

In the early 1990s, I gave lecture tours

across the United States

that sparked new interest

in massively parallel processing supercomputers.

My parallel supercomputing lectures

were co-sponsored by

the Association for Computer Machinery

that was the premier society

for computer professionals.

My parallel supercomputing lectures

were co-sponsored by

The Computer Society of the IEEE

that was the largest society

for computer professionals.

Although I gave 90-minute lectures

in the early 1990s,

I must say that my experimental discovery

of how parallel processing

makes modern computers faster

and how massively parallel processing makes the new supercomputer

the fastest

cannot be passed along

in a 90-minute lecture.

My experimental discovery

took me fifteen years,

onward of June 20, 1974,

to discover.

Therefore, it should also take you

fifteen years

to re-discover

the parallel processing supercomputer

that took me fifteen years

to discover.

It’s often said that

it takes ten thousand [10,000] hours

to become the best athlete,

to become a professional soccer player,

or to become a tennis professional.

I put in two hundred thousand

[200,000] hours

to experimentally discover

how and why massively parallel processing

across a new internet

makes the supercomputer super.

Any person that did not

put in two hundred thousand

[200,000] hours

cannot explain how I invented

the modern parallel processing supercomputer.

For me, Philip Emeagwali,

the 1970s and ‘80s

were the decades of darkness.

In those decades,

mathematicians ridiculed me by saying: “This will not work!”

Looking back, those rejections paved the way for me to work alone.

It was important that I pursued

only my own scientific vision.

Two bad visions

are not better than

one good vision.

Two heads with two visions

are not better than

one head with one vision,

unless both heads pursue

only one vision.

Put differently, democracy rarely works

in the quest for new scientific knowledge.

As the inventor, I alone

know the origin story of my invention.

I know how I want to express my story.

I don’t care

if my expression

conforms to how others expect me

to express it.

Nobody should be afraid to be who she is.

Parallel Processing Was Mocked

In the United States and Europe,

and in the 1970s and ‘80s,

the leaders of thought

in the world of supercomputing—namely, Gene Amdahl

who advocated sequential processing

supercomputing

and Seymour Cray

who advocated vector processing

supercomputing—

had the wrong visions

for the future of the supercomputer

that will be parallel processing

and doin