Since the mid-2000s, just about every personal computer made contains a multi-core and/or multi-threaded CPU. These are both practical applications of parallel processing technology, which was still in its infancy back in March 1986 when this next Computer Chronicles episode aired. At this point, parallel processing was largely the domain of expensive “super” minicomputers that were marketed as less-expensive alternatives–relatively speaking–to traditional mainframes.

Stewart and Gary Playing with Their Trains

In his cold open, recorded at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, Stewart Cheifet showed a video camera that was part of a computerized vision system attempting to mimic the human brain by processing millions of pieces of information in milliseconds. Sequential computers couldn’t handle that kind of speed, he said, so computer scientists needed to develop computers that worked more like the human brain in terms of parallel processing.