How I Invented a New Internet – Philip Emeagwali
Philip Emeagwali Author Philip Emeagwali
11 How I Invented a New Internet Lecture 180120-1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47RzSvweTOE Philip Emeagwali Lecture 180120-1 Visit http://emeagwali.com for complete transcripts of 100+ lectures. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47RzSvweTOE https://YouTube.com/emeagwali Podcast: https://SoundCloud.com/emeagwali 11.1 How I Named My New Internet   11.1.1 Naming of My New Internet Scientific knowledge is the first son of God. Science pre-existed before humanity and before…
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Philip Emeagwali Lectures
11 How I Invented a New Internet

Lecture 180120-1

Philip Emeagwali Lecture 180120-1

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

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47RzSvweTOE

https://YouTube.com/emeagwali

Podcast: https://SoundCloud.com/emeagwali

11.1 How I Named My New Internet

11.1.1 Naming of My New Internet

Scientific knowledge

is the first son of God.

Science pre-existed before humanity

and before our planet, the Earth,

was formed 4.6 billion years ago.

Back in 1989,

one of the science news headlines

was that an African Supercomputer Wizard

in the United States

had experimentally discovered

how and why parallel processing

makes modern computers faster

and makes the new supercomputer

the fastest

and invented

how and why to use

that new supercomputer knowledge

to build a new supercomputer

that encircled the globe

in the way the internet does.

I am that African supercomputer scientist

who was in the news

back in 1989.

I was in the news

for experimentally discovering

that parallel processing

is an entirely new way of supercomputing

across thousands or millions or billions

of processors.

Parallel processing

is defined as the technique

of fastest supercomputing

that is fastest

by computing many things

at once, or in parallel,

instead of computing only one thing

at a time, or in sequence.

Prior to my 1989 invention,

parallel processing was widely caricatured

and rejected

as a huge waste of everybody’s time.

Parallel processing

was rejected for four reasons.

The first reason

the parallel processing supercomputer

was rejected

was because supercomputing in parallel

had performance problems.

That is, in the 1980s and earlier,

parallel processing supercomputers

could not compute faster than

sequential processing supercomputers.

The second reason

the parallel processing supercomputer

was rejected

was because it was physically impossible

to invent

how to harness

64 binary thousand processors

and harness them

to compute together to solve

any of the twenty toughest problems

arising in supercomputing.

Those extreme-scale problems

were called the twenty Grand Challenges

of supercomputing.

The third reason

the parallel processing supercomputer

was rejected

was that programming supercomputers

to solve a system of coupled, nonlinear,

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

partial differential equations

of a new calculus

made research computational mathematicians

deeply uncomfortable.

In particular, to parallel process

via emails

sent to and from

sixteen-bit long email addresses

and to parallel process

the most dense, abstract,

and impenetrable equations

and to parallel process

their algebraic approximations

and to parallel process

their floating-point arithmetical calculations

that must be executed across

sixteen times

two-to-power sixteen,

or across one binary million, email wires

is like dancing in the fire.

The fourth reason

the parallel processing supercomputer

was rejected

was that I, its discoverer,

was black and African.

My research and experimental discovery

of parallel processing

was not taken seriously

in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

My 1,057 page research report

on the massively parallel processing supercomputer

was rejected six times

and rejected by three universities

and rejected by scientific journals

before it was eventually accepted

by the supercomputer community.

In the 1980s, the massively

parallel processing supercomputer

was unfathomable

and for that reason

a president of an American university

that had an annual research expenditure

of one billion dollars

and his five supercomputer experts

threw my one thousand

and fifty-seven [1,057]-page

supercomputer research report

into the trash.

When a newspaper journalist

writing about my invention

came to interview

those five supercomputer experts

they couldn’t do the interview.

The reason was that

they never read or understood

my supercomputer research report.

So I was not taken seriously

until The Computer Society

of the IEEE—The Institute of Electrical

and Electronics Engineers—

gave me the top prize in supercomputing.

To put my dilemma in context,

back in the 1980s,

it was impossible

for an all-white scientific jury

to give me the top award

in computer science.

The award committees

asked for my photograph

or insisted on a face-to-face interview

that will reveal

the fact that I am black and African.

In the 1980s,

only one award committee

did not demand my photograph.

I won that award

and it made the news headlines

that a black African

had won the top prize

in supercomputing.

The controversy

prompted the award committee

to change their rules

and to demand a face-to-face lecture

that, in turn, made it impossible

for other black supercomputer scientists

to win the top prize in supercomputing.

To this day,

the color of my skin

gets more attention

than the solution of my equations.

In the 1980s and earlier

and in the United States,

white research mathematicians

did not attend research seminars

given by black research mathematicians.

11.1.2 Why I Won the Top Prize in Supercomputing

When the Computer Society

of The Institute of Electrical

and Electronics Engineers

gives its top award to a supercomputer inventor,

computer scientists

and the 450 thousand members

of The Institute reads about it.

After my widely-rejected

experimental discovery

was accepted and validated

by The Computer Society,

the naysaying vector processing supercomputer scientists

that—at that time—did not believe in

parallel processing supercomputers

saw The Computer Society’s endorsement

of my experimental discovery

as a vote of confidence

on massively parallel processing supercomputers.

The public saw the news headlines

on the African supercomputer wizard

that won top US prize

as a vote of confidence

on Philip Emeagwali.

In the decades of the 1960s

through ‘80s,

parallel processing

was the subject of a titanic battle

between the majority

who believed that all supercomputers

should be powered by

a single, isolated processor

and the minority

who believed that all supercomputers

should be powered by

an ensemble of thousands of processors.

That was the reason

only one computational mathematician

attended my public lecture

on parallel processing

that took place in November 1982

and took place in a lecture auditorium

that was a short walk

from The White House, Washington, D.C.

Nine years later, my lecture

on parallel processing supercomputing

that I gave on July 8, 1991

in Washington, D.C.

was before a standing room only audience of research computational mathematicians

that were attending

the largest international congress

of mathematics.

That audience—that was similar

to the one of nine years earlier

that humiliated, ridiculed,

and rejected my experimental discovery

of parallel processing—gave me

a standing ovation.

11.1.3 The Free Performance Lunch is Over

After my experimental discovery

of how and why parallel processing

makes modern computers faster

and makes the new supercomputer

the fastest

my telephone began to ring off the hook.

It seemed like every other

research computational scientist

wanted to become my new best friend

and my new scientific collaborator.

So, I was not surprised

when Steve Jobs

tried to reach me by telephone

in about June 1990.

Steve Jobs

wanted to know how he could harness

the power of parallel processing

to process images

and to do so faster.

To put things in context,

back in June 1990, Steve Jobs

was depressed and devastated

because he was unceremonious removed

from Apple Corporation,

the company that he started.

Looking for a new direction,

Steve Jobs

was intrigued by my experimental discovery

of how and why parallel processing

across a global network of

65,536 processors,

or across a new internet,

reduced 65,536 days, or 180 years,

of time-to-solution

on only one processor

that is not a member

of an ensemble of processors

to just one day of time-to-solution

across a new internet

that is a global network of

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

Fast forward eighteen years,

to June 9, 2008,

Steve Jobs

told the opening session

of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California

that parallel processing

is still very challenging.

As reported, the following day,

in the June 10, 2008 issue

of the New York Times,

Steve Jobs

told Apple’s Worldwide Developers

that: [quote]

PROP ALERT

“The way the processor industry

is going

is to add more and more cores,

but nobody knows

how to program

those things,”

Steve Jobs said.

And he continued:

“I mean, two, yeah;

four, not really;

eight, forget it.”

[unquote]

I experimentally discovered

how and why

massively parallel processing

is at the heart of the fastest supercomputer.

I experimentally discovered

that massively parallel processing

is a necessary condition

for the fastest supercomputers.

Historically, we never had

new supercomputers without

experimentally discovering

faster supercomputer speeds.

To achieve grand wizardry

in fastest massively parallel supercomputing

requires the visceral understanding

that the massively parallel supercomputer

is not a new computer, per se.

I experimentally discovered

that my new and massively

parallel supercomputer

that I visualized

as a global network of

65,536 processors

is a small internet, de facto.

11.1.4 My Naming Convention Across a New Internet

I invented a new internet

that was defined and outlined

by a new global network of

65,536 tightly-coupled processors.

And I invented

how to use that new internet

to make modern computers faster

and to make the new supercomputer

the fastest

and how and why to use

that new supercomputer knowledge

to build a new supercomputer

that encircled the globe

in the way the internet does.

I will take a retrospective look

on my early years,

or the sixteen years

onward of June 20, 1974.

I will look back on how I named

each processor within my new internet

that is a global network of

64 binary thousand processors.

And how I invented

that new internet

to be a massively parallel supercomputer.

I experimentally invented

how to assign a unique string of

sixteen zeroes and ones

and assign each string

as the sixteen-bit name

of each of my two-to-power sixteen codes that had a one-to-one correspondence

with my 64 binary thousand processors.

So after several years

of hands-on, direct programming

of an ensemble of 64 binary thousand

commodity-off-the-shelf processors

that I visualized

as my new internet,

I became known to programmers

in the supercomputing community

as the [quote unquote]

“go-to” person.

Research supercomputer scientists

that sought answers to questions

on message passing came to me.

Vector processing supercomputer programmers—who at that time

presumed that I was in the

Los Alamos National Laboratory

in Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States

that was the supercomputing capital

of the world

emailed me

when they wanted to learn

how to program

the message-passing ensemble of processors

that everybody hated

and that everybody ridiculed, mocked,

and disrespected

as a huge waste of everybody’s time.

That unique message-passing

supercomputer experience

that I gained in the 1980s

was the reason,

I was appointed in the early 1990s

as the Distinguished Lecturer

of the two leading computer societies

in the world,

namely, the Association

for Computing Machinery

and The Computer Society

of the Institute of Electrical

and Electronics Engineers.

11.1.5 Father of the Internet

A twelve-year-old writing a school report

on “Philip Emeagwali”

asked me:

“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 profiled

in major U.S. newspapers

and who was credited

for the invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

Back in June 1974,

I conceived 64 thousand computers

around the Earth

that comprised of

a new global network of computers.

I conceived that new global network

as used to forecast the weather.

But it took me fifteen years,

onward of June 1974,

to invent how to harness

that new global network of computers

and harness it to forecast the weather.”

In 1989, it made the news headlines

that an African supercomputer wizard

in the United States

had won the top prize

in the field of supercomputing.

That African supercomputer wizard

was in the news for inventing

how to harness a new internet

that is a new global network of

65,536 tightly-coupled

commodity-off-the-shelf processors. Each processor

was akin to a tiny computer.

I am that African

internet scientist

who was in the news

back in 1989.

I won the top prize in supercomputing

because I experimentally discovered

how an ensemble of 65,536,

or two-raised-to-power-16,

commodity-of-the shelf processors

could be assembled

as the building blocks

of a new supercomputer

and harnessed to become

the world’s fastest supercomputer,

de facto.

I was in the news

because I invented

how to synchronously communicate

and how to simultaneously compute

and how to communicate

and compute together

and how to do both

as one seamless, cohesive unit.

That cohesive unit

was my new supercomputer de facto.

That cohesive unit

was defined around

a sixteen-dimensional hyperball

that is a new internet, by definition.

That cohesive unit

was the supercomputing machinery

that I used to send and receive emails

to and from

65,536, or two-to-power sixteen

sixteen-bit long

email addresses.

Each of those 64 binary thousand

email addresses

was a unique string of

16 zeroes and ones.

Back in the 1980s,

I emailed 64 binary thousand

computer codes

to as many processors.

Each of those computer codes

solved initial-boundary value problems

with each problem’s governing

partial differential equations

of modern calculus

and with each equation’s specified

initial and boundary conditions.

What made the news headlines

was that I solved

24 million equations of algebra.

That was a world record

in algebra

back in 1989

as well as my contribution

to algebra.

Each equation of algebra

that I solved

was restating the Second Law of Motion

that was at the physics core

of the computational physics model

that I executed

within each processor.

I was in the news in 1989

for inventing

how to solve problems

in extreme-scale algebra

and for inventing how to solve them across

a new internet

that is a 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.

I was in the news in 1989

for inventing that new internet

and for inventing it

as a new supercomputer, de facto.

What made the news headlines

was that I synchronously communicated

via emails to and from

across 65,536 cooperating processors

and that I simultaneously computed

at the speed of 47,303

calculations per processor

to compute

at the then unheard of

total speed of

3.1 billion calculations per second.

That experimental discovery

of massively parallel processing

changed the way we think about

the new supercomputer

that is the fastest computer

that will become

the computer of tomorrow,

if history repeats itself.

That experimental discovery

of massively parallel processing

garnered international headlines

and I the story teller

became the story

and the subject of school reports titled:

“The Contributions of Philip Emeagwali

to the Development of the Computer.”

I was the first to experimentally discover

how and why parallel processing

makes modern computers faster

and makes the new supercomputer

the fastest

and how to use

that new supercomputer knowledge

to build a new supercomputer.

I experimentally discovered

massively parallel processing

and I did so

by solving a grand challenge problem

that the United States government

defined as one of its

twenty gold-ring problems

in supercomputing.

My experimental discovery

changed the way we looked at

the supercomputer.

Back in the 1970s and ‘80s,

I looked at the precursor

to the modern supercomputer

that I programmed

as a parallel processing internet

that was outlined and defined

by my 65,536

commodity-off-the-shelf processors.

Fast forward four decades,

the modern supercomputer

is a union of vast numbers of processors

that communicate

as a tightly-coupled Internet

that is outlined and defined

by millions upon millions of processors.

That experimental discovery

of the parallel processing internet

is the reason I am profiled in books on the history of the Internet.

11.1.6 How I Named My New Internet

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 computer

who was profiled

in major U.S. newspapers

and who was credited

for the invention

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer

Each of my 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

encircled my new internet

and had its unique name.

That name was a unique string of

sixteen zeroes and ones.

I used a unique binary reflected

naming scheme

for each processor

that was within my global network of

65,536 processors.

My global network of processors

is a small internet.

That small copy of the internet

is one of the keys

to my experimental discovery

of how and why parallel processing

makes modern computers faster

and makes the new supercomputer

the fastest

and my invention

of how to use

that new supercomputer knowledge

to build a new supercomputer.

The experimental discovery

of massively parallel processing across

a new internet

is my contribution

to the development of faster computers

and the fastest supercomputer.

I experimentally discovered

how and why

the millions of processors

of a massively parallel supercomputer

can be harnessed to cooperatively

compute together

and to compute as one seamless,

cohesive unit

and to compute faster than

any serial or any vector

processing supercomputer.

I experimentally discovered massively

parallel processing

and I invented the technology

through my proper naming

of the processors within my internet.

I visualized my internet

as encircling a globe, or a hyperglobe,

in hyperspace.

That experimental discovery

is my contribution

to the development

of the first internet

that’s the fastest supercomputer

and that massively parallel processed

across an ensemble of

65,536 cooperating processors.

11.1.7 The Modern Supercomputer