Ken Batcher - Definition

Ken Batcher is one of the computer architects at Goodyear Aerospace [now Loral] in Dayton, Ohio, USA. Among the designs he worked on were the:

• Massively Parallel Processor (16,384 custom bit-serial processors {8 to a chip} organized in a SIMD 128 x 128 processor array with additional CPU rows for fault-tolerance} and located at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center [currently at the Smithsonian]. This unit predates the Danny Hillis' Thinking Machines Corp.'s Connection Machine

• The Goodyear STARAN associative processor arrays, a version of which was found apparently in the USAF AWACS planes.

Batcher is best known for his half-serious, half-humorous definition of a supercomputer - "A supercomputer is a device for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems."