I'm Philip Emeagwali. In the 1970s, my ideas on massively parallel supercomputing were not fully formed. For that reason, my earliest research reports were mocked and ridiculed and I was off handedly dismissed for espousing a beautiful theory that lacked an experimental confirmation. In the 1970s and ‘80s, massively parallel processing was dismissed as a supercomputing theory that will never gain many adherents. That is, the idea of harnessing
the potential supercomputing power
of an ensemble of 65,536 processors
was ludicrous.
That was the reason
I was the only full time programmer
of that ensemble of
two-raised-to-power sixteen processors.
For the ten years onward of 1979,
my research report
on the then unorthodox
parallel supercomputer
grew from a few pages
to 1,057 pages.
In 1989, my 40-page highlights
of my 1,057-page research report
won the top prize in supercomputing
and made the news headlines.
Looking back to the 1980s in the U.S.,
a rejection pattern that repeated itself
dozens of times was this:
I would get a telephone interview
for a job that was advertised
and get it because
I had the most hands-on experience
in supercomputing.
During the interview,
the interviewer is taken aback
when he discovers that I am black
and African-born.
In the 1970s and ‘80s,
they were so few black
vector supercomputer scientists
that even I would have been shocked
if I had seen a black African
giving my lecture on
massively parallel supercomputing.
I experienced this cognitive dissonance
the first time
I attended a research seminar lecture
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1992,
that was delivered by
a very dark skinned mathematician
of African descent.
She was known
to the white mathematicians
but I—the only black mathematician
in the audience—was the only person
in the auditorium
that was in a state of denial.
It’s ironic that
the only black male mathematician
in the audience of mathematicians
was the only person
that denied that
the black female mathematician
was a genius.
Her lecture was on the ergodic theory
of dynamical systems.
I presumed that she might not have
the command of her materials.
She proved me wrong.
Similarly, it was presumed that
it will be impossible
to find a young, black,
and gifted mathematician
that can solve the toughest problem
arising in extreme-scale
computational mathematics.
That was the reason
only one person
attended my research seminar
on supercomputing
that I delivered in November 1982
in a large auditorium
that was a short walk
from The White House, Washington, D.C.
My subsequent discovery
of practical parallel processing
that occurred seven years later
and that made the news headlines
was theorized
in that supercomputing seminar
that all but one person boycotted.
By the late 1980s, I realized that
my discovery that
practical parallel processing
will become the vital technology
that will underpin every supercomputer
will only be accepted if and only if,
white supercomputer scientists
think that I am white.
That was the reason I mailed
the research report on my invention
of practical parallel supercomputing
to an independent committee
of supercomputer scientists
that were 2,500 miles away
in San Francisco, California.
The four members
of that supercomputer committee
were appointed by the President
of The Computer Society
that was the largest branch of the IEEE,
the acronym for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
that is the world’s largest
technical society.
The Computer Society
was the world’s largest of its kind.
That committee of foremost experts
in supercomputing
were tasked with awarding the top prize
in supercomputing.
The essence of the forty-page report
that I submitted to the IEEE
and the detailed
1,057-page research report
that won the top prize
in supercomputing is this:
I discovered that
practical parallel processing
will become the vital technology
that will underpin every supercomputer.
The news of my invention
of practical parallel supercomputing
spread like wildfire
and quickly made it to the dailies
in many countries.
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