Technology: Fast and Smart

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Making parallelism work will benefit not just supercomputer users but also those researchers in computer science's other grand project, artificial intelligence. In fact, one of the most advanced parallel machines, a 65,536- processor computer called the Connection Machine, was built by researchers trained at M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. W. Daniel Hillis, the 31-year-old engineer who designed the computer, sees in it the first concrete evidence of what he views as an inevitable convergence of the two fields. "Supercomputing is an enabling technology for artificial intelligence," says Hillis. "Just as you couldn't build an airplane without first developing engines powerful enough to drive them, you can't build artificial intelligence without faster supercomputers."

Far more is at stake than the sale of a few multimillion-dollar machines. $ The country that leads the world in supercomputers and artificial intelligence will hold the keys to economic and technological development in the 1990s and beyond. Breakthroughs are waiting to be made in fields that range from genetic engineering to particle physics, from automated manufacturing to space exploration. There is even a chance that scientists will use the new computers to understand better the most complex machine of all, the human mind.