The ability for computers to communicate with each other was around since the 50's, but to do so on a massive scale took the efforts of many people construct what we call the internet. No one man can be credited with the construction of the internet, it took the effort of many scientists and mathematicians. But the math containing the core of the internet, the abillity for many computers to communicate at once, is attributed to one man: his name is Philip Emeagwali.
Emeagwali was born into poverty in Akure, Nigeria on August 23, 1954 as the son of James Emeagwali, a nurse’s aide, and his 16-year-old wife, Agatha. While he showed great mathematical ability at an early age his parents, being war refugees, could not afford to complete his education; forcing Philip to quit school. Emeagwali also was swept up in the Biafran army during the war, becoming himself a child solder. Emeagwali recalls: "The experience of being a child soldier in Africa's bloodiest war made me tougher than a Vietnam vet. It was like learning from the school of hard knocks. I became very skilled at surviving with little money. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I came out stronger from the civil war crisis. In fact, the Chinese symbol for 'crisis' is the same for 'opportunity'. You can focus on the crisis in your life, or you can focus on the new opportunities that the crisis presents. Or, as my mother tells me, 'when one door closes, God opens another' ". "One in fifteen people in my hometown died in that 30-month war," he remembers. "Both sides did not take prisoners of war; they did not want the expense of caring for prisoners…when the soldiers captured my hometown all the men were shot and all the women became comfort ladies." Later, he earned a general education certificate from the University of London and also while being a young man, degrees from George Washington University and the University of Maryland, as well as a doctoral fellowship from the University of Michigan.
At Michigan, he and others in the scientific community debated on how to simulate the detection of oil reservoirs using a supercomputer. Hailing from a country which has much oil coupled with his understanding of the drilling process, the benefit of having that resource drilled efficiently was all the motivation he needed to make this problem his own, using it as his college dissertation. Recalling a science fiction article from 1922 about using many weathermen simutaneously stationed all over the globe predicting the weather, Emeagwali was motivated to do the same thing with many computers. He called it a HyperBall international network of computers. In the initial stages, his proposal to use 64,000 computers to form an international network was rejected by peers on the grounds that it would not possible. Despite him being denied of funding and employment for a decade, he alone developed his calculations in a book discussing the subject which was a thousand-pages long which entailed the use of 64 binary thousand, which is the equivalent of 65,536 processors, to perform the world’s fastest computation.
"In 1987, an experimental hypercube computer with 65,536 processors became available at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. With their inability to program 65,536 processors to simulate nuclear blasts, the officials there allowed physicists an opportunity to submit remedies to the problem. Fearing that the Lab officials will not accept him if it was known that he was black, Emeagwali decided to submit his proposal remotely. The Lab officials approved his usage of its computers and he remotely programmed 65,536 processors in Los Alamos (New Mexico) while living in Michigan". "It was his formula that used 65,000 separate computer processors to perform 3.1 billion calculations per second in 1989," said CNN. "That feat,” CNN continued, "led to computer scientists comprehending the capabilities of supercomputers and the practical applications of creating a system that allowed multiple computers to communicate." This later could use many computer to do computations instead of using a few supercomputers.
For his success in achieving such a feat Emeagwali was rewarded with the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize (supercomputing's Nobel Prize) for his contributions which, in part, encouraged the petroleum industry to purchase one in ten supercomputers.
The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 27, 1990) is quoted as stating:
“Philip Emeagwali, who took on an enormously difficult problem and,
like most students working on Ph.D. dissertations, solved it alone, has
won computation's top prize, captured in the past only by seasoned
research teams … If his program can squeeze out a few more percentage
points, it will help decrease U.S. reliance on foreign oil.”
And the same scientists who formerly scorned Emeagwali's ideas now heraled him as a genius.
“The amount of money at stake is staggering. For example, you can typically expect to recover 10 percent of a field's oil. If you can improve your production schedule to get just 1 percent more oil, you will increase your yield by $400 million,” wrote the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize Committee in the academic journal Software (May 1990).
In the bimonthly news journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, mathematician Alan Karp wrote: "I have checked with several reservoir engineers who feel that his calculation is of real importance and very fast. His explicit method not only generates lots of megaflops, but solves problems faster than implicit methods. Emeagwali is the first to have applied a pseudo-time approach in reservoir modeling.” (SIAM News, May 1990)
The triumph of Emeagwali using 64 binary-thousand processors proved and renewed interest in his formerly rejected proposal to use 64 thousand far-flung computers to forecast the weather for the whole Earth. Because the The arrangement in which the nodes of a LAN of his previously unacceptably judged international network of computers was similar to, but predated that, of the Internet (the Internet is short for an international network). It was learned again and called an “idea that was ahead of its time” and “a germinal seed of the Internet.” For Emeagwali's contributions to the internet, the book History of the Internet profiled him as an Internet pioneer, was voted one of the twenty innovators of the Internet, and CNN called him "A Father of the Internet."
"During his career, Emeagwali has received more than 100 prizes, awards and honors. These include the Computer Scientist of the Year Award of the National Technical Association (1993), Distinguished Scientist Award of the World Bank (1998), Best Scientist in Africa Award of the Pan African Broadcasting, Heritage and Achievement Awards (2001), Gallery of Prominent Refugees of the United Nations (2001), profiled in the book Making It in America as one of '400 models of eminent Americans,' and in Who's Who in 20th Century America. In a televised speech, as president, Bill Clinton described Emeagwali as 'one of the great minds of the Information Age.' "
"Emeagwali's math that lead to the 65,000 processors to perform the then staggering 3.1 billion calculations, in part, lead to:
Philip Emeagwali's math lead to the concept of the massively-parallel computer, which was made into the Connection Machine supercomputer – a machine featuring over 65,000 parallel processors – in the late 80's. His math also allows many computers to communicate at once. Without him, the internet wouldn't exist beyond a few computers networked at a time. That means no internet as we know it, no multiplayer games, no chatrooms, no PlayStation home, and no Cell processor! So the next time you go online and chat to your friends, play a game on your PC, render an animation quickly with that super-speedy multicore processor, or have your friends over to gawk at your sweet, sweet PS3; realize that none of this could not have been possible without the mind, and the math, of Philip Emeagwali.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html
Gray, Madison "A Calculating Move" 2/07
http://www.topblacks.com/technology/philip-emeagwali%20.htm
"A Father of the Internet" 2001
http://www.jobpostings.net/articleDetail.cfm?id=232
Smith, Daryl "Philip Emeagwali" 1/4/03
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/computer-science/emeagwali.nsbe.interview.html
Woodhouse, Ed "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" February 19, 2002
http://emeagwali.com/usa/michigan/one-of-the-worlds-fastest-humans.html
Woodford, John "One of the World's Fastest Humans" 2/91
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010313S0113
Hara, Yoshiko "IBM, Sony, Toshiba team on processor architecture for broadband" 03/13/01
We published the performance optimization guide for Ghost of Tsushima earlier today. This is the second post in that series, recommending the optimized settings for the Steam Deck handheld console. Ghost of Tsushima was tested in the below scene using customized graphics settings that provide a stable 40-45 FPS at 720p.
Yes, Ubisoft's divisive pirate RPG Skull and Bones appears to be sailing on the tides of success, as Ubisoft prepares to launch Season 2.
If true, it goes to show that the negative press response was not reflecting reality. I personally thought omitting land traversal was a huge miss. But i also thought there was some things that were great about it. Lets see which story was true and which was made up (or worse, paid for)
No data just pr talk. The same site has an article talking about how the price of the game was slashed quickly post release, these sites treat us like fools lol
They're right. There is no argument either. The game is a turd and Ubisoft is doubling down on that turd. It's all fancy PR talk with no actual substance. I don't know what "argument" you're looking for. I read the article. It sounds like Ubisoft asked for a redo on their "AAAA" "game". Trash game and trash company.
Price decrease articles are typically made to make it seem like a gaming is flopping, they're often poorly researched and meaningless.
The article about the game thriving is also meaningless because it contains no data, it's basically corporate propaganda, even suicide squad is getting a season 2
In resume, not only this site plays both sides, it does it lazily and cynically because they don't care about quality, what they care about is clicks from us ( fools )
@ jb
🤣 all it says is thanksfor the support. It's not like they're saying hey it's better than what you've seen come buy it. Lol you guys will whine about anything
@ Friendly
Gotcha when you referenced the other articles was like... uh doesn't that make it non biased? Basically you prefer stats with these articles or some sort of metric. I'm tracking. All I can say is... not everything is an amazing read or comment on n4g, lol. Game on!
Skull and bones TReMENDoUS ReSPoNSe. Prove it gaming journalist !! Prove it
The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication was incredibly scary, and would be considered a cinematic horror because of how well everything is done visually. There are many faults with it, but at least it's very scary.
if u ever hear racist comments on cs remind those bastards that a nigerian developed the internet that they are using
I read this article and it sounded a little over the top. I've never even heard of the guy.
So I went to check the wiki and it states:
"Philip Emeagwali has been labeled a self-adulator whose purported accomplishments are significantly exaggerated"
ummm...
Nice to know a fellow brotha contributed so much to science.
Pixelsword, you have the most entertaining blog entries, even if they are a little over top, keep em' comin'.
writing and stuff is more of my thing. WTH is that written on the green board in the pic? UFO language?