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Why hypercube computer technology will become obsolete
Consider an n-dimensional hypercube of edge length 4
which contains
hyperspheres of unit radius which are tightly-packed so that
two adjacent hyperspheres
touch each other.
A 32-node
binary hypercube network.
The distance from the centers of the
hyperspheres to the center
of the bounding n-dimensional hypercube is
.
Consequently, for
dimensional hypercubes, the
hypersphere tightly-packed into the hole
at the center
of the sphere-packed hypercube will not touch the bounding
hypercube. For n=9, the hypersphere
will touch the bounding hypercube. For
,
the
hypersphere tightly-packed
into the huge hole at the center
of the sphere-packed hypercube will protrude outside the
bounding hypercube.
The 2048 processing nodes of the Connection Machine are
interconnected in a hypercube topology with each node containing 32 processing elements.
Click
on photograph.
The latter results demonstrate that the packing density of
sphere-packed hypercubes
continuously decreases as the dimensionality increases.
Philip Emeagwali discovered that sphere packing and
hypercube technology are related fields.
Click on emeagwali.com for more information.
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