Re: Hardware Mma ?
- To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
- Subject: Re: Hardware Mma ?
- From: fateman at peoplesparc.berkeley.edu (Richard Fateman)
- Date: Wed, 20 May 92 11:31:35 PDT
It is not clear that hardware support for pattern matching and term rewriting would make Mathematica run much faster. And if anyone built special hardware, it is unlikely it would be cost effective. Stock hardware speeds improve so fast, and the cost of building standard computers is so much lower than custom hardware, that a company building such stuff would probably not be able to stay in business. The lisp machine companies ran up against this problem. I gather that Symbolics was able to stay in business by becoming essentially a software company. If you want to run Mathematica faster, I think you need more and faster memory, but that's just a guess.