Calls to mind his other famous quote, "Would you rather plow your field with two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"

How about ten billion chickens?

Yeah. I feel like he's still partially vindicated with things like the dragonfly topology, as a lot of problems don't nicely map onto a 2D or 3D topology (so longest distance is still the limiting factor). But the chicken approach certainly scales better, and I feel like since Cray's time there are more local-aware algorithms around.