I read the paper you refer to, it in turn credits Frank Worrell as the original person coining that particular metaphor in ... 1985!

The paper quoted:

"To minimize memory latency these 4B machines will likely be smoking-hairy-golf-balls3. The processor will be one large chip wrapped in a memory package about the size of a golf ball. The surface of the golf ball will be hot and hairy: hot because of the heat dissipation, and hairy because the machine will need many wires to connect it to the outside world."

With a footnote:

"Frank Worrell used this metaphor in 1985."

The paper is here:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gray/papers/su...

It's very interesting reading, especially when you look at how much he got right.

We don't quite have those smoking hairy golfballs just yet but we're slowly getting there.