[HN Gopher] Arvind has died
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Arvind has died
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 258 points
Date : 2024-06-19 14:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| buildbot wrote:
| Not only are his personal accomplishments amazing, but the number
| of people he taught and mentored who then went on to do the same
| with the next generation is immense.
| mattl wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_(computer_scientist) has
| more information
| itisit wrote:
| Not to gloss over his accomplishments, but does anyone know how
| his mononym stuck? It's one thing for an entertainer who's
| marketed as such, but quite another for an academic.
| benrapscallion wrote:
| He preferred it.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| Indian naming traditions vary by region. It gets intricate upon
| emigration and matching to Western formats. e.g. this
| distinguished biophysicist also goes by one name:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govindjee
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Indeed. I had a professor in undergrad named Kanapathipillai
| Thirugnanasambanthan. He might've been from Sri Lanka rather
| than India proper, though.
|
| He went by "Sam Thiru".
|
| When I first began I asked a friend if he knew anything about
| this "Professor Thiru". He said "Well, that's not really his
| name. His real name wouldn't fit in the schedule." :-)
|
| Later, a different professor used him as an example of why it
| was a bad idea to hard-code the length of name fields.
|
| Great guy, and one of the best instructors I've ever had.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| > Indeed. I had a professor in undergrad named
| Kanapathipillai Thirugnanasambanthan. He might've been from
| Sri Lanka rather than India proper, though.
|
| Almost certain he's a Sri Lankan Tamil. South Indians and
| Sri Lankans transliterate slightly differently.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _I had a professor in undergrad named Kanapathipillai
| Thirugnanasambanthan_
|
| My son had a high-school classmate whose name was something
| similarly long. Everyone called him "R-18."
| vrc wrote:
| Lots of people from Andhra/Telugu people have many names,
| and are known by initials or drop them if they come to the
| US. That sometimes includes optional caste names or titular
| names that come at the end, with the family name leading
| (as in China and Japan). My uncle, for example, had a four-
| word given name, formally introduced his given name in
| India or in temples as the latter two, and then dropped the
| first of the two, and swapped family-first for first-family
| when he came to the states.
|
| For example, if you ever fly into Bangalore or Mumbai,
| you'll see GVK on their airports. That's for Gunapati
| Venkata Krishna Reddy, who goes by GVK. Gunapati is the
| family name, Venkata Krishna is his given name, and Reddy
| is the caste name.
|
| Other examples are NT Rama Rao, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and my
| favorite, is a person I know of who went by KRKVNS Sharma.
| gadders wrote:
| I had an Indian colleague that only had one name. To fit in
| with the company she went by a double first name. i.e (I
| can't remember her Indian name) Jane Jane.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| There's a noted chemist named Warren Warren. Washington
| State had a football player named Samoa Samoa. Hawaii had a
| great volleyball player named Allen Allen.
|
| The beat goes on. ;-)
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I really don't understand why people give names like
| this. I understand how they happen when you're trying to
| force a name into a naming convention that isn't the one
| it comes from, but why start your kid out that way?
|
| Near-miss: the poet William Carlos Williams.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| In that vein, another distinguished theoretical
| chemist/physicist: Philip Phillips
| madcaptenor wrote:
| A bit annoying to search for this guy because there's a
| Phillip Phillips who won a season of American Idol.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| But the scientist has only one 'l' in his first name.
|
| He also graduated from the University of Walla Walla.
| shawn_w wrote:
| Walla Walla University (formerly college). Really
| annoying because there's a relatively much better known
| WWU on the other side of the state. Your ordering would
| have been a better choice when it renamed.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Not to be confused with Whitman college, which is the
| more well known college in Walla Walla.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| Whoops. Correction noted.
| fastasucan wrote:
| I think the naming convention of naming your kid William
| (as an example) just so they can be called Bill the rest
| of their life is even more peculiar. Why walk that extra
| mile?
| robotelvis wrote:
| I think it's mostly so they can have some degree of
| choice over what they are called.
|
| You might call them Bill, but they can decide to call
| themselves Billy, or Will, or Willy, or William - without
| the hassle of actually changing their name.
|
| There is also a class thing where naming a kid with a
| short form is seen as being lower class.
| Koshkin wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Major_Major_Major
| desipenguin wrote:
| My colleague had FNU on his US visa (and hence on his
| driving license as well) https://citizenpath.com/faq/fnu-
| first-name-unknown/
|
| So it was like FNU Raj (if his name was Raj - it wasn't)
| bsimpson wrote:
| Google DevRel had someone who went by his last name
| (Surma). In the company directory, he was Surma Surma.
| clort wrote:
| The article (about Arvind) says he had two sons, "Divakar '01
| and Prabhakar '04" can somebody explain their names in this
| context?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| In publications from colleges/universities, that usually
| means "graduate class of year". When no institution is
| specified, it usually means "this institution".
|
| So in this case, it means Divakar (graduate of MIT class of
| 2001) and Prabhakar (graduate of MIT class of 2004).
| madcaptenor wrote:
| This checks out - if you search for their names with MIT
| you'll find both of them. Both are medical doctors.
| ripjaygn wrote:
| I thought it was their year of birth and was confused.
| treprinum wrote:
| When you are the only Indian at CSAIL at that time, everyone
| knows you by your first name. These days it wouldn't work as
| Indians are no longer scarce in the US.
| gumby wrote:
| That was probably his whole name. The IBM Fellow Mohan
| sometimes adds an initial "C" to avoid this kind of confusion
| ("C Mohan")
|
| Also see https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
| programmers-... , for example item 20
|
| Even in Europe, surnames weren't that common until a fashion
| for or wave of surname assignments spread from the mid 19th
| century into the 1920s.
| treprinum wrote:
| Arvind Mithal:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_(computer_scientist)
| jzl wrote:
| I scanned all responses to see if someone had posted this
| link! One of the great blog posts about the intersection
| between computer science and humanity.
|
| Item 40 is the best one. Of course, the majority of items on
| this list will create problems in society long before they
| are an issue with computer systems.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Some surnames of people seem to be based on the names of the
| traditional occupations of their ancestors.
|
| Examples:
|
| English or British origin people:
|
| Carpenter, Miller, Fisher, Tailor, Weaver, Smith, Cooper,
| etc.
|
| This happens in some other countries too. E.g.:
|
| India:
|
| Munim, Vakil, Gavli, Engineer, _something_ -vala or -walla
| (this last one for Parsis, typically), Pandit, Kulkarni,
| Shimpi, etc.
| dugmartin wrote:
| Lots of German ones too.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:German_surnames_fro
| m...
| madcaptenor wrote:
| The best example I know for India is a Dr. Devika
| Icecreamwala, who is not an ice cream seller but a
| dermatologist. (It's her married name; she was born Patel,
| which is about as boring as you can get for an Indian
| surname.)
| vrc wrote:
| I prefer the Indian singer Kunal Ganjawala. Also shoutout
| to the Tobaccowalas and Daruvalas!
| fuzztester wrote:
| Best one that I have heard of is Sodabottleopenerwala.
|
| Not sure if it's made up or real.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I give you Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowasji_Jehangir_Readymoney
| jankcorn wrote:
| When I first met him in 1978 and asked for his last name, he
| replied "Arvind is my name". He was very deeply against the
| caste system and felt that using last names (IIRC, which also
| indicated caste) was something that he refused to do from high
| school (his high school diploma name is just 'Arvind'). It
| seemed that this was a hassle his whole life, but one he
| continued because he felt so strongly.
|
| He said that after 9/11, the US government came down very hard
| on MIT to force use of last names and that is the first time I
| ever knew what it was.
|
| Deeply thoughtful, highly caring and warm to all the people he
| met, he will be deeply missed!
| bobosha wrote:
| RIP Prof. Arvind who I was lucky to rub shoulders with during my
| grad school.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Was he sick? 77 years isn't _that_ old, these days.
| nequo wrote:
| Life expectancy for men in the US is about 74 to 76 years.[1]
| In Massachusetts, it's about 76 to 78. So this does not seem
| unusual at all.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
| hedgehog wrote:
| That's a misleading number, knowing that he was a lauded prof
| at MIT we can expect that he was significantly wealthier than
| the median Mass. resident and with that significantly higher
| life expectancy.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It is a little young, the impression is right. Statistics is
| hard. "Life expectancy" being an average includes all of the
| reasons to die when you're young, and young deaths have a
| large effect on the average.
|
| The most frequent age at death is in your mid to late 80s.
| I'd like to post the statistic on the 25th and 75th
| percentile of age at death or maybe 40th, 60th, but I can't
| readily find the data with the amount of effort I'm willing
| to put in.
|
| Here's a histogram though
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Histogram-of-
| estimated-n...
| madcaptenor wrote:
| A rare example of a naturally occurring left-skewed
| distribution.
| sophacles wrote:
| Not that naturally - until fairly recently it was
| bimodal. Fortunately we've dramatically reduced the
| number of infant and childhood deaths in the last ~100
| years.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Life expectancy for men in the US is about 74 to 76 years_
|
| that's life expectancy _at birth_. The life expectancy of a
| man who is 70 yo today, having already not died of all the
| causes that harvest young men, is 13+ years more (without
| accounting for other aspects of their demographic)
|
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
| basil-rash wrote:
| Yes. "an illness he was being treated for suddenly worsened"
| aseipp wrote:
| Sad news, I've learned a lot from some of his old course notes
| and would come across papers coauthored by him. Take care Arvind,
| I'll write some Bluespec this week in your honor!
| neilv wrote:
| @dang Black band, and change HN post title to the article's
| current title, "Arvind, longtime MIT professor and prolific
| computer scientist, dies at 77"?
| pizlonator wrote:
| So sad! Rest in peace.
|
| I got to meet him in his office and have dinner with him once. It
| was an unforgettable and hugely influential experience.
|
| Two fun anecdotes that have never left me:
|
| - He taught me that IPIs (inter-processor interrupts) are
| inherently and hugely expensive. Knowing this has helped me with
| architectural choices more times than I can count.
|
| - He quoted (I think from someone else) a rebuttal to the idea
| that Physics is the reality and math is just theory. It goes
| something like: _Math is the reality that physicists sometimes
| discover_. Love it.
| denotational wrote:
| > IPIs (inter-processor interrupts) are inherently and hugely
| expensive
|
| I'd be interested to hear more about this.
| pizlonator wrote:
| Let me see if I can remember what Arvind said. This was like
| 20 years ago so I won't get it exactly right.
|
| He was comparing to two CPUs sharing data with shared memory.
| In the shared memory case, each CPU stays on the happy path
| but sometimes has to do some cache coherence, which may stall
| the CPU, but that's the worst that can happen, generally.
|
| But if you try to send a message to another CPU, then you're
| asking it to raise an interrupt. That's not the happy path.
| CPU will have to stop everything to receive the interrupt and
| then divert execution to some interrupt gate. Arvind's point
| was that every impl of this is going to be much much worse
| than the worst case of cache coherence.
|
| Every measurement I've ever made confirms this.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Most processors are designed with very expensive task
| switching, but I don't think I'd call that "inherent". A
| processor could implement an interrupt as a forced branch
| 200 cycles in the future. Then it's the same speed as a
| function call with callee-save registers. That's still
| slower than letting cache hardware manage the whole thing
| in the background, but it should be as little as
| nanoseconds slower.
| keith_analog wrote:
| There's a fairly recent study looking into the cost of
| raising an interrupt. TLDR: the cost on conventional
| systems is quite high; a significant part of the cost can
| be eliminated by using a custom kernel; even with a custom
| kernel, there remains a substantial cost.
|
| https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10079614
|
| To my knowledge, the remaining cost could be decreased to
| approximately the same cost as a branch mispredict, but
| getting there would require changes to the chip hardware
| and software stack.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > To my knowledge, the remaining cost could be decreased
| to approximately the same cost as a branch mispredict,
| but getting there would require changes to the chip
| hardware and software stack.
|
| Do it even need to be a _mis_ prediction?
|
| If you are completely focused on latency then flushing
| everything else makes sense. But I would think that if
| you continue execution for now and put a branch
| instruction into the queue you'd reduce the cost per
| interrupt even further.
| criddell wrote:
| > Math is the reality that physicists sometimes discover
|
| Is that a reference to the mathematical universe hypothesis?
| Did Arvind ever work with Max Tegmark at MIT?
| sriram_sun wrote:
| This is about 25 yrs. back. As a grad student, I used to stumble
| into his papers pretty regularly. Later, I'd scan for author name
| and pay a lot more attention if it was by Arvind (also a few
| others). I'd always smile after looking at the author name.
| Growing up in India, your last name doesn't mean much.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| > Growing up in India, your last name doesn't mean much.
|
| My experience is the opposite. People often use only the last
| name, and first name is seldom used. E.g Mr. Kumaraswamy or Ms.
| Deshmukh in professional context and simply the last name in
| friend circles.
| dilawar wrote:
| He probably means northern part of India. Surnames are more
| emphasised in the South than North.
|
| I think it started when British started asking for surnames
| in job application in colonial India. South Indiana took
| their birthplace as surname along with caste name. In North,
| Singh and Kumar were used as surnames. Caste names became
| quite popular in late 20th century.
|
| Before British, I am not sure if surnames were common
| anywhere in India. Would be a lovely study in history.
| kragen wrote:
| i think the reason people like arvind stopped using surnames
| was that, in india, surnames had come to mean far, far too
| much. now that he's dead he can't protest against mit news
| foisting a surname on him
| daghamm wrote:
| His lectures were fun, and he made complex things look easy. I
| frequently consulted his lecture notes at my first jobs.
|
| RIP Arvind
| vkaku wrote:
| RIP Arvind
| shash wrote:
| As a user of Bluespec and a follower of his CA papers, salutes
| and RIP.
| luddy wrote:
| I was very fortunate to have worked on Arvind's Monsoon project
| as a contractor for Motorola. He was the very model of what a
| professor ought to be: an active and outgoing researcher, an
| natural educator, a good organizer, and a lively, witty, and
| gracious man in public. What a loss.
|
| The last time I saw him, at a dinner in Champaign IL around 2005,
| he told this joke, apropos of MIT's reputation for arrogance:
|
| Someone called a faculty meeting at MIT and said, guys, we have a
| problem. People say that we're arrogant. We need to come up with
| some ideas for being less arrogant. Who has an idea?
|
| One of the faculty members stood up and said, I know! I'll teach
| a course on humility!
|
| The meeting organizer said that's a great idea! A course on
| humility is exactly what we need! And the meeting was adjourned.
|
| At the end of the semester, a follow-up faculty meeting was
| called.
|
| The organizer asked, so, what about our course on humility? Let's
| have a report about it.
|
| The faculty member who taught the course stood up, and said:
|
| We have the best g*d-damned course on humility!
|
| ---
|
| RIP Arvind.
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