Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Von Neumann syndrome

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Stifle (talk) 08:54, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Von Neumann syndrome[edit]

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The article is of questionable notability. It has 7 results from Google Books, 18 from Google Scholar (of which 7 are primary sources); and the first and second references do not appear to exist. There are also conflict of interest concerns as 11 of 53 edits were made by RainierH and Rainier3, whose user names suggest that Reiner Hartenstein (who defined the syndrome) is the creator and only major editor of the article. Rilak (talk) 09:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The term was coined by Ramamoorthy, not Hartenstein. Notability seems established by references from several authors, including a keynote talk at a conference. Hyperdoctor Phrogghrus (talk) 11:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Rilak said that Hartenstein defined the syndrome, not that he coined the term. The term was coined by Ramamoorthy to describe a phenomenon which had first been identified and described Hartenstein. What "keynote talk at a conference" are you referring to? If you mean "The Transdisciplinary Responsibility of CS Curricula (keynote)", given by Hartenstein, then it is not an independent source. If you mean something else then it would help if you specified what. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:34, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I was referring to this which appears to be a keynote address at the ARC 2008 workshop on Reconfigurable Computing.
    - I will take your word for it that it was a "keynote address", though I haven't seen anything that says so. However, that too is by Hartenstein, so still no independent source. JamesBWatson (talk) 01:12, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Almost everything I have been able to find on this is written by Hartenstein, and everything else is either derived from Wikipedia or only a minor mention. I am not able to read the papers cited in the article, but I have seen information about them, including abstracts, tables of contents, etc, and it does not look as though they give substantial coverage. If anyone who does have access to them can indicate that they do so then I will stand corrected, but on the basis of everything I have seen, it appears that this is a concept which has been heavily publicised by Hartenstein, but given only slight attention by third parties. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:34, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep, maybe? This is probably on the edge of having sufficient coverage to meet notability guidelines, although I think cogent arguments can be made in either direction. Sources that are at least apparently independent of Hartenstein do exist, although there aren't just lots of them. This book (published by Springer) briefly discusses reconfigurable computing as a solution to von Neumann syndrome. This IEEE white paper (pdf) dedicates a column of text to discussion of the topic, although I am uncertain the extent to which it should be considered a reliable source. Serpent's Choice (talk) 16:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~Strong keep~~ I think that there's definitely a topic here that can be referenced, and so the article should be kept. It may possibly ultimately need rescoping a bit, but it doesn't call for deletion. I had a quick look to see if there was another article it could be merged with but nothing immediately popped up, which strengthens the keep.Rememberway (talk) 16:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)][reply]
Merge with parallel slowdown Looks like it's at heart the same topic.Rememberway (talk) 20:08, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- If we are going to merge, it appears that parallel slowdown and the von Neumann syndrome are not the same thing. Parallel slowdown is about increasing the number of processors allocated to solving a problem to the point where time spent by communication between processors dominates computation, causing the improvement in performance to deviate from an ideal linear increase. The von Neumann syndrome is about the time spent moving data between the processor and memory dominating time spent computing. Rilak (talk) 05:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In an encyclopedia it is usually a good idea to merge things that are similar, because it helps the reader compare and contrast, so merging things that cause slowdowns in parallel processing is desirable.Rememberway (talk) 14:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What reliable sources say that parallel slowdown is similar to the von Neumann syndrome? Searching Google Books and Scholar for "parallel slowdown" "von Neumann syndrome" returns zero and two results, respectively. The Scholar results are false positives. To claim that both topics are similar, based on your understanding, is improper synthesis; for you have made a conclusion that is unsupported by any reliable source. Rilak (talk) 01:00, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment ~~Having looked at Serpent's Choice's links, I agree that this is "probably on the edge of having sufficient coverage", and I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.~~ Serpent's Choice's links just about indicate that there is some independent coverage, but not enough to establish notability. (However, I find Rememberway's comment unhelpful. Simply saying that the topic "can be referenced" without showing that sources exist does nothing at all to establish notability.) JamesBWatson (talk) 18:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, I'd seen it before in non wikipedia context, so I'm sure that the topic is notable.Rememberway (talk) 20:09, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure it wasn't the well-known (and similar) term "von Neumann bottleneck"? There are so few mentions of the term "von Neumann syndrome", it just doesn't seem notable when the term purports to describe a major problem caused by the widely-used von Neumann architecture and the well-known difficulty in programming MPPs. The von Neumann bottleneck is a problem that has been noted since the 1970s at least; and the MPP programming issue, since the 1980s. The amount of literature on these two issues dwarfs what has been said of the von Neumann syndrome. The syndrome seems to have been defined to promote Hartenstein's unestablished, proposed form of reconfigurable computing. Ramamoorthy's coining of the term "von Neumann syndrome" probably falls under WP:NEOLOGISM given the lack of coverage of the syndrome and the term. Rilak (talk) 05:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, "I'd seen it before..., so I'm sure that the topic is notable" is completely unverifaible, and not a reliable source, so it is of no value as a reason for keeping. Saying that adds nothing to saying that the topic "can be referenced" without showing that sources exist, which I mentioned above. In Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions you have simply moved from WP:MUSTBESOURCES to WP:ITSNOTABLE. JamesBWatson (talk) 01:03, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, it wasn't von Neumann bottleneck.Rememberway (talk) 14:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete Not quite enough reliable and independent sources with significant coverage to establish that this is a principle of computer science of sufficient notability for a stand-alone article in a general encyclopedia such as this. Millions of topics in science and engineering have had more discussion than this and also do not need their own encyclopedia articles. Edison (talk) 22:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 04:20, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or redirect to parallel computing. There isn't much here to establish notability. The article parallel computing doesn't mention him at all. Szzuk (talk) 18:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all sorts of terms become trendy for a year or two as one professor tries to get tenure. The article does even explain it (I have a PhD in computer science and 35 years experience so might be dense, forgive me). It mixes talking about software and hardware for example. W Nowicki (talk) 00:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.