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Draft Corrections — Post 49: The Attack of the Killer Micros

Post path: _posts/2026-07-20-The-attack-of-the-killer-micros.md Status: verification complete (2026-07-20); all corrections below APPLIED to the post prior to publication. Companion: VERIFIED_FACTS_Post49_KillerMicros.md (canonical fact table).

Method

Independent citation-and-quote verification pass following the series protocol (VERIFICATION_SUMMARY_2026-05-17.md, feedback_independent_verification), on top of the in-workflow verify/review/patch stages:

  1. Citation resolution. All 57 unique primary (non-archive) URLs in the footnotes were fetched (HTTP, follow-redirects, browser UA). 53 returned HTTP 200. The exceptions:
    • computerhistory.org/events/bio/Tony,Hey -> 404 dead link (corrected below).
    • washingtonpost.com/archive/... x3 -> HTTP 000 (WaPo blocks automated clients but serves browsers); each is a secondary citation in a footnote that leads with a working primary (Wikipedia / hpcwire) AND carries a resolving Wayback archive. Acceptable.
    • mcs.anl.gov/~lusk/ -> 500; anl.gov/article/... and two sciencedirect.com DOIs -> 403 (bot-block / publisher). Each is a secondary URL with a working co-primary (newswise, dblp) and, for ~lusk/, a resolving Wayback snapshot. Acceptable per protocol.
    • The archive fixes made by the patcher were confirmed: all 39 Wayback lines now carry real 14-digit timestamps (up from the timestampless generic form).
  2. Quotes. The post contains no verbatim block quotes to source-check. The “attack of the killer micros” catchphrase is deliberately handled as folklore, not presented as a direct Brooks quotation (per the VERIFIED_FACTS caution); the footnote flags that “Eugene D. Brooks III” is unverified and asserts only “Eugene Brooks”. Verified the one specific title claim – Hoffmann’s edited volume The Dawn of Massively Parallel Processing in Meteorology – resolves as a real Springer book (link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-84020-3, HTTP 200).
  3. Facts / read-through. Full read for accuracy and for the NWP-thread balance. Load-bearing facts (Brooks/SC1990; Seymour Cray accident 23 Sep / death 5 Oct 1996 age 71; Cray Computer Corp Chapter 11 24 Mar 1995; TMC Aug 1994; SGI Feb 1996 $740M; TOP500 first list Jun 1993, CM-5/1024 at Los Alamos 59.70 GFLOP/s; MPI-1 1994 / MPI-2 1997; Gustafson CACM May 1988, 1021/1020/1016 speed-ups on a 1024-node nCUBE; ECMWF C90 -> VPP700 Sep 1996 (46 PEs / 39 compute) -> VPP5000 -> IBM POWER4 cluster 2002-04; IFS transposition strategy) all match the VERIFIED_FACTS table.

Corrections applied

1. (Citation – dead link) Tony Hey Computer History Museum URL returned 404

Location: Footnote [^hey].

Issue: the secondary primary https://computerhistory.org/events/bio/Tony,Hey returns HTTP 404 (malformed/removed). The footnote already leads with a working primary (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hey, 200) plus a resolving Wayback line.

Fix applied: removed the dead CHM URL and its clause; footnote now cites the Wikipedia primary + Wayback archive only.

2. (Accuracy – photo/caption mismatch) CM-5 figure

Location: Section 3, the CM-5 figure caption (Post49_CM5_Frostburg.jpg).

Issue: the caption read “A … CM-5, the machine that topped the first TOP500 list … at Los Alamos”, implying the pictured machine was the Los Alamos TOP500 topper. The photograph (brewbooks, CC BY-SA 2.0) is of a different CM-5 (the NSA’s FROSTBURG, per the image filename), which did not top TOP500.

Fix applied: reworded to decouple the photograph from the claim – “A … CM-5. In a 1024-processor configuration at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a CM-5 topped the very first TOP500 list in June 1993.” – keeping the (correct) fact without asserting the pictured machine is that one.

Not changed (verified acceptable)

  • The three WaPo 000 URLs and the ~lusk/ 500 / anl.gov + sciencedirect 403s: all secondary, each with a working lead primary and (where blocked) a resolving Wayback archive.
  • The inline SVG halo-exchange diagram carries an explicit white background rect, so it renders on both the light and dark site skins.

Verdict

No Tier-1 factual errors. Two corrections (one dead link, one photo/caption accuracy), both applied. Post is citation-clean and quote-safe (no verbatim block quotes) for publication.