🚀 go-pugleaf

I was just reading this Saturday's edition of the New York Times and I
happened across this in the "Patents" column in the Business section on
page 32 (lower left).

It is included here...

Patents -- Edmund L. Andrews
 "Simplifying a Computing Procedure"

WASHINGTON -- Inspired by origami, the Oriental art of folding paper into
ornamental objects, a researcher at the American Telephone and Telegraph
Company's Bell Laboratories has patented a method for solving large
computational problems.

Invented by Alan Huang, the method is intended to facilitate parallel
computing, a procedure in which a large, complex problem is broken down into
many parts and solved by scores of separate processors working simultaneously.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in developing such systems has been
coordination:  how should labor be divided among different processors, and
how can their activities be synchronized and consolidated to yield a
coherent solution?  The traditional approach has been to write elaborate
software to orchestrate everything, but the complexity of the instructions
often contitutes a roadblock in itself.

[... general fluffiness omitted ...]

To illustrate his method, Mr. Huang cited the problem of measuring wind
over every square inch of an airplane fuselage.  One can do this, he said
by placing processors over every square inch of the plane's surface to
measure air flow and then search for some way to consolidate all the
measurements into a coherent picture.

Mr. Huang said he begins the process with a flat piece of paper, which
is evenly divided into scores of squares that each represent a microprocessor.
He then folds the paper into the shape of the airplane, assigning
responsibilities to the processors based on their location.

The plane is then unfolded, back into a flat piece of paper, which now
constitutes a map for the processors.  The flat map is refolded vertically
into a fan shape and folded a third time, horizontally, into what looks
like an accordian.  This is done to progressively simplify the pattern.

"This is where the magic is,"  Mr. Huang said.  The new shape is simple
and compacy, yet it constitutes an accurate model for how the actual
microprocessors should be arranged and assigned responsibilities.

Mr. Huang said the same method can be applied to mapping most other
computational problems.  Instead of forming a paper airplane, the computer
designer merely works out a flow chart of activity on a flat piece of
paper and then starts folding.

Mr. Huang obtained patent 4,943,909.
---end of Times article---

Does anyone have references to this patent or the processes described?  This
article seems rather lacking in understanding of what Mr. Huang was talking
about.  It sounds to me like Mr. Huang and AT&T have patented a topological
mapping of processors in parallel computing.  I'm sure there is a lot of
research going on in this area, does anyone have pointers?

What are people's opinions on this patent?  Again, it seems to be a patent
on an algorithm.  Is it _really_ possible that the patent office thought
they were patenting a process simply because it talked about folding
paper??


--
Rodney