Multiflow
Encyclopedia
Multiflow Computer, Inc. , founded in April, 1984 near New Haven, Connecticut, USA
, was a manufacturer and seller of minisupercomputer
hardware and software embodying the VLIW design style. Multiflow, incorporated in Delaware
, ended operations in March, 1990, after selling about 125 VLIW minisupercomputers in the United States
, Europe
and Japan
.
While Multiflow’s commercial success was small and short-lived, the fact of its technical success and the dissemination of its technology and people had a great effect on the future of computer science
and the computer industry. Multiflow’s computers were arguably the most novel ever to be broadly sold, programmed, and used as if they were normal computers (other novel computers either required novel programming, or represented more incremental steps beyond existing computers).
Along with Cydrome
, an attached-VLIW minisupercomputer company that had less commercial success, Multiflow demonstrated that the VLIW design style was practical, a conclusion surprising to many. While still controversial, VLIW has since been a force in high-performance embedded systems, and has been finding slow acceptance in general-purpose computing.
, a Yale University
computer science professor, during the period 1979-1981. VLIW was motivated by a compiler
scheduling
technique, called trace scheduling
, that Fisher had developed as a graduate student at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
of New York University
in 1978. Trace scheduling, unlike any prior compiler technique, exposed significant quantities of instruction-level parallelism (ILP) in ordinary computer programs, without laborious hand coding. This implied the practicality of processors for which the compiler could be relied upon to find and specify ILP.
VLIW was put forward by Fisher as a way to build general-purpose instruction-level parallel processors exploiting ILP to a degree that would have been impractical using what would later be called superscalar
control hardware. Instead, the compiler could, in advance, arrange the ILP to be carried out nearly in lock-step by the hardware, commanded by long instructions or a similar mechanism. While there had previously been processors that achieved significant amounts of ILP, they had all relied upon code laboriously hand-parallelized by the user, or upon library routines
, and thus were not general-purpose computers and did not fit the VLIW paradigm
.
The practicality of trace scheduling was demonstrated by a compiler built at Yale by Fisher and three of his graduate students, John Ruttenberg, Alexandru Nicolau, and especially John Ellis, whose doctoral dissertation on the compiler won the ACM
Doctoral Dissertation Award in 1985. Encouraged by their compiling progress, Fisher’s group started an architecture and hardware design effort called the ELI
(Enormously Long Instructions) Project.
operations per cycle, was never built. Instead, Fisher, Ruttenberg, and John O'Donnell, who had led the ELI hardware project, started Multiflow in 1984 after failing to interest any mainstream computer companies in partnering in the ELI project. Originally, Multiflow was to have become a division of the workstation company Apollo Computer
, but eventually it sought venture capital
funding, closing its first round of financing in January, 1985, when the company already had about 20 employees. Donald E. Eckdahl, a former head of the NCR
computer division, joined the company in 1985 as its CEO
.
Multiflow delivered its first working VLIW minisupercomputers in early 1987 to three beta-sites: Grumman Aircraft, Sikorsky Helicopter, and the Supercomputer Research Center. A Trace 14/200 was demonstrated to the public at a supercomputing conference in May, 1987, in Santa Clara, California
.
/memory
, 2 floating
, and a branch. The 14/ models had twice as many of each instruction, and thus 512-bit long instruction words. Like many scientific-oriented processors of its day, the Trace had no traditional cache memory.
Multiflow also announced a 28/ model at the outset, and eventually these were built and sold to a few customers. The 28/ had 1024-bit instruction words. Having ordinary programs compiled for computers like these was unquestionably revolutionary, as no earlier computer had offered compiled ILP even like that of the 7/ models. The 28/ systems pushed these limits far beyond either academic or industrial conception. While only a few customer programs contained enough ILP to keep a 28/ busy, when they did the performance was remarkable, since the processor would then initiate close to all 28 operations on average.
gate array
s for the integer ALU
s and registers
, 3rd party floating point chips, and medium-scale integrated circuits for the control and other portions.
In 1988, the company started development of an ECL
/500 family, which was to feature a 14/ that could also be used as a multiprocessor
of two 7/ models, but that system was not completed before the company ceased operations.
. Probably, at the time the Multiflow systems were delivered, no computer that issued instructions longer than a single operation at a time had ever run a compiled mainstream operating system. Yet the entire Unix operating system and the usual tools all ran, with the usual portions compiled, on all the company’s models.
The compiler was particularly noteworthy, as could be expected given Multiflow’s technology. The company built a new compiler, in a similar style to that developed at Yale, but industrial-strength and with the incorporation of much commercially-necessary capability. In addition to implementing aggressive trace scheduling, it was known for its reliability, for its incorporation of the state-of-the-art in optimization
, and its ability to handle simultaneously many different language variants and all of the different object-code incompatible
models of the Multiflow Traces. (While code from a 7/X00 could run correctly on a 14/X00, the nature of the architecture mandated that it would have to be recompiled to run faster than it did on the 7/.)
The compiler was generating correct code by 1985, and by 1987 it was producing code that found significant amounts of ILP. After 1987, with the press of customers and prospects, its development emphasized features and functionality, though performance-oriented improvement continued.
The compiler was so robust, and so good at exposing ILP independent of the system it was targeted for, that after Multiflow closed, the compiler was licensed by many of the largest computer companies. It has been reported that this included Intel, Hewlett-Packard
, Digital Equipment Corporation
, Fujitsu
, Hughes, HAL Computer Systems
, and Silicon Graphics
. Other companies known to have licensed the technology include Equator Technologies, Hitachi
and NEC. Compilers built starting from that code base were used for advanced development and benchmark
reporting for the most important superscalar processors of the 1990s. Descendants of the compiler were still in wide use 20 years after it first started generating correct code (notably, Intel's icc "Proton" compiler and the NEC Earth Simulator compiler), and are often used as benchmark targets for new compiler development. MIT and The University of Washington are among the universities that received and used the compiler for advanced research purposes.
The Multiflow compiler was written in C
. It pre-dated the popular use of C++
(Multiflow was a beta-site for the language). The compiler designers were strong believers in the object-oriented paradigm, however, and the compiler had a rather idiosyncratic style that encapsulated the structures and operations in it. This caused a steep learning curve for the many developers who used it after Multiflow’s demise, but one that was usually considered worth it because of the unique combination of ambitious compiling and rock-solid engineering the compiler offered.
, began distributing Traces in Germany
with great success, despite fierce competition from other minisupercomputer companies. In the following three years, Multiflow opened offices or had distributors in most of Western Europe and Japan, and opened offices in many US metropolitan areas.
revolution meant there would be a steady march of ever faster and cheaper competition. The economies inherent in microprocessors were inaccessible to startups in general, and incompatible with VLIWs, which would have required too much silicon for the densities of the time. (The first VLIW microprocessor was the Philips
Life, the ancestor of today’s TriMedia
, delivered several years later.) Since the founding of Sun
and SGI
in the early 1980s, no new general-purpose computer company has succeeded without building computers for which there was an existing large software base, and none of the many minisupercomputer startup companies of the 1980s eventually succeeded.
Following Multiflow’s closing, its employees went on to have a widespread effect on the industry. The small core group of engineers and scientists, numbering about 20, produced 4 fellows in major American computer companies (2 of whom were Eckert-Mauchly Award winners), several founders of successful startups, and leaders of major development efforts at large companies. The only nontechnical person in the core group, hired out of business school, went on to lead corporate development at a major research lab. As Multiflow grew, it continued the tradition of hiring highly talented people: as one example, the documentation writer became one of the most influential editors in computer publishing. Multiflow’s effect on the computer industry was very much its people in addition to its technology.
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, was a manufacturer and seller of minisupercomputer
Minisupercomputer
Minisupercomputers constituted a short-lived class of computers that emerged in the mid-1980s. As scientific computing using vector processors became more popular, the need for lower-cost systems that might be used at the departmental level instead of the corporate level created an opportunity for...
hardware and software embodying the VLIW design style. Multiflow, incorporated in Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
, ended operations in March, 1990, after selling about 125 VLIW minisupercomputers in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
While Multiflow’s commercial success was small and short-lived, the fact of its technical success and the dissemination of its technology and people had a great effect on the future of computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
and the computer industry. Multiflow’s computers were arguably the most novel ever to be broadly sold, programmed, and used as if they were normal computers (other novel computers either required novel programming, or represented more incremental steps beyond existing computers).
Along with Cydrome
Cydrome
Cydrome was a computer company started in 1984 in San Jose, California whose mission was to develop a numeric processor. The founders were David Yen, Wei Yen, Ross Towle, Arun Kumar, and Bob Rau...
, an attached-VLIW minisupercomputer company that had less commercial success, Multiflow demonstrated that the VLIW design style was practical, a conclusion surprising to many. While still controversial, VLIW has since been a force in high-performance embedded systems, and has been finding slow acceptance in general-purpose computing.
Technology roots
The VLIW (for Very Long Instruction Word) design style was first proposed by Joseph A. (Josh) FisherJosh Fisher
Joseph A. "Josh" Fisher is an American computer scientist. He is a Hewlett-Packard Senior Fellow. He worked at HP Labs from 1990 through 2006 in instruction-level parallelism and in custom embedded VLIW processors and their compilers. Fisher retired from active employment at HP in 2006.Fisher...
, a Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
computer science professor, during the period 1979-1981. VLIW was motivated by a compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
scheduling
Scheduling (computing)
In computer science, a scheduling is the method by which threads, processes or data flows are given access to system resources . This is usually done to load balance a system effectively or achieve a target quality of service...
technique, called trace scheduling
Trace scheduling
Trace scheduling is an optimization technique used in compilers for computer programs.A compiler often can, by rearranging its generated machine instructions for faster execution, improve program performance...
, that Fisher had developed as a graduate student at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences is an independent division of New York University under the Faculty of Arts & Science that serves as a center for research and advanced training in computer science and mathematics...
of New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
in 1978. Trace scheduling, unlike any prior compiler technique, exposed significant quantities of instruction-level parallelism (ILP) in ordinary computer programs, without laborious hand coding. This implied the practicality of processors for which the compiler could be relied upon to find and specify ILP.
VLIW was put forward by Fisher as a way to build general-purpose instruction-level parallel processors exploiting ILP to a degree that would have been impractical using what would later be called superscalar
Superscalar
A superscalar CPU architecture implements a form of parallelism called instruction level parallelism within a single processor. It therefore allows faster CPU throughput than would otherwise be possible at a given clock rate...
control hardware. Instead, the compiler could, in advance, arrange the ILP to be carried out nearly in lock-step by the hardware, commanded by long instructions or a similar mechanism. While there had previously been processors that achieved significant amounts of ILP, they had all relied upon code laboriously hand-parallelized by the user, or upon library routines
Library (computer science)
In computer science, a library is a collection of resources used to develop software. These may include pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications....
, and thus were not general-purpose computers and did not fit the VLIW paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
.
The practicality of trace scheduling was demonstrated by a compiler built at Yale by Fisher and three of his graduate students, John Ruttenberg, Alexandru Nicolau, and especially John Ellis, whose doctoral dissertation on the compiler won the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
Doctoral Dissertation Award in 1985. Encouraged by their compiling progress, Fisher’s group started an architecture and hardware design effort called the ELI
Elihu Yale
Elihu Yale was a Welsh merchant and philanthropist, governor of the East India Company, and a benefactor of the Collegiate School of Connecticut, which in 1718 was named Yale College in his honour.- Life :...
(Enormously Long Instructions) Project.
Business beginnings
ELI, which was to have 512-bit instruction words and initiate 10-30 RISCReduced instruction set computer
Reduced instruction set computing, or RISC , is a CPU design strategy based on the insight that simplified instructions can provide higher performance if this simplicity enables much faster execution of each instruction. A computer based on this strategy is a reduced instruction set computer...
operations per cycle, was never built. Instead, Fisher, Ruttenberg, and John O'Donnell, who had led the ELI hardware project, started Multiflow in 1984 after failing to interest any mainstream computer companies in partnering in the ELI project. Originally, Multiflow was to have become a division of the workstation company Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer, Inc., founded 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts by William Poduska and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo was one of the first vendors of graphical workstations in the 1980s...
, but eventually it sought venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
funding, closing its first round of financing in January, 1985, when the company already had about 20 employees. Donald E. Eckdahl, a former head of the NCR
NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation is an American technology company specializing in kiosk products for the retail, financial, travel, healthcare, food service, entertainment, gaming and public sector industries. Its main products are self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check...
computer division, joined the company in 1985 as its CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
.
Multiflow delivered its first working VLIW minisupercomputers in early 1987 to three beta-sites: Grumman Aircraft, Sikorsky Helicopter, and the Supercomputer Research Center. A Trace 14/200 was demonstrated to the public at a supercomputing conference in May, 1987, in Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the...
.
Innovative architecture
Multiflow’s first computers were called the Trace 7/200 and Trace 14/200. The 7/ in the computer model number signified that the processor could initiate seven operations each cycle, using a 256-bit long instruction composed of 7 32-bit operations and a 32-bit utility field. The 7 operations were 4 integerInteger (computer science)
In computer science, an integer is a datum of integral data type, a data type which represents some finite subset of the mathematical integers. Integral data types may be of different sizes and may or may not be allowed to contain negative values....
/memory
Computer storage
Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components and recording media that retain digital data. Data storage is one of the core functions and fundamental components of computers....
, 2 floating
Floating point
In computing, floating point describes a method of representing real numbers in a way that can support a wide range of values. Numbers are, in general, represented approximately to a fixed number of significant digits and scaled using an exponent. The base for the scaling is normally 2, 10 or 16...
, and a branch. The 14/ models had twice as many of each instruction, and thus 512-bit long instruction words. Like many scientific-oriented processors of its day, the Trace had no traditional cache memory.
Multiflow also announced a 28/ model at the outset, and eventually these were built and sold to a few customers. The 28/ had 1024-bit instruction words. Having ordinary programs compiled for computers like these was unquestionably revolutionary, as no earlier computer had offered compiled ILP even like that of the 7/ models. The 28/ systems pushed these limits far beyond either academic or industrial conception. While only a few customer programs contained enough ILP to keep a 28/ busy, when they did the performance was remarkable, since the processor would then initiate close to all 28 operations on average.
Hardware
Each 7/ processor datapath comprised a control unit board, an integer ALU board, and a floating point board. The 14/ added a second integer ALU board and a second floating point board. Before many systems were in the field, faster 3rd party floating-point chips became available, and the /200 family was replaced by the object-code incompatible 7/300 and 14/300, and the 14/300 became by far the company’s most popular model. In about 1988, a /100 entry level series was introduced as well, but these were essentially /300 systems with a slower clock. All the processors were built using CMOSCMOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM, and other digital logic circuits...
gate array
Gate array
A gate array or uncommitted logic array is an approach to the design and manufacture of application-specific integrated circuits...
s for the integer ALU
Arithmetic logic unit
In computing, an arithmetic logic unit is a digital circuit that performs arithmetic and logical operations.The ALU is a fundamental building block of the central processing unit of a computer, and even the simplest microprocessors contain one for purposes such as maintaining timers...
s and registers
Processor register
In computer architecture, a processor register is a small amount of storage available as part of a CPU or other digital processor. Such registers are addressed by mechanisms other than main memory and can be accessed more quickly...
, 3rd party floating point chips, and medium-scale integrated circuits for the control and other portions.
In 1988, the company started development of an ECL
Emitter-coupled logic
In electronics, emitter-coupled logic , is a logic family that achieves high speed by using an overdriven BJT differential amplifier with single-ended input, whose emitter current is limited to avoid the slow saturation region of transistor operation....
/500 family, which was to feature a 14/ that could also be used as a multiprocessor
Multiprocessor
Computer system having two or more processing units each sharing main memory and peripherals, in order to simultaneously process programs.Sometimes the term Multiprocessor is confused with the term Multiprocessing....
of two 7/ models, but that system was not completed before the company ceased operations.
Innovative software
Multiflow also produced the software tools for the systems it built. The systems ran Berkeley UnixBerkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
. Probably, at the time the Multiflow systems were delivered, no computer that issued instructions longer than a single operation at a time had ever run a compiled mainstream operating system. Yet the entire Unix operating system and the usual tools all ran, with the usual portions compiled, on all the company’s models.
The compiler was particularly noteworthy, as could be expected given Multiflow’s technology. The company built a new compiler, in a similar style to that developed at Yale, but industrial-strength and with the incorporation of much commercially-necessary capability. In addition to implementing aggressive trace scheduling, it was known for its reliability, for its incorporation of the state-of-the-art in optimization
Compiler optimization
Compiler optimization is the process of tuning the output of a compiler to minimize or maximize some attributes of an executable computer program. The most common requirement is to minimize the time taken to execute a program; a less common one is to minimize the amount of memory occupied...
, and its ability to handle simultaneously many different language variants and all of the different object-code incompatible
Backward compatibility
In the context of telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backward or downward compatible if it can work with input generated by an older device...
models of the Multiflow Traces. (While code from a 7/X00 could run correctly on a 14/X00, the nature of the architecture mandated that it would have to be recompiled to run faster than it did on the 7/.)
The compiler was generating correct code by 1985, and by 1987 it was producing code that found significant amounts of ILP. After 1987, with the press of customers and prospects, its development emphasized features and functionality, though performance-oriented improvement continued.
The compiler was so robust, and so good at exposing ILP independent of the system it was targeted for, that after Multiflow closed, the compiler was licensed by many of the largest computer companies. It has been reported that this included Intel, Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
, Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
, Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
, Hughes, HAL Computer Systems
HAL Computer Systems
HAL Computer Systems, Inc was a Campbell, California-based computer manufacturer founded in 1990 by Andrew Heller, a principal designer of the original IBM POWER architecture...
, and Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
. Other companies known to have licensed the technology include Equator Technologies, Hitachi
Hitachi, Ltd.
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The company is the parent of the Hitachi Group as part of the larger DKB Group companies...
and NEC. Compilers built starting from that code base were used for advanced development and benchmark
Benchmark (computing)
In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it...
reporting for the most important superscalar processors of the 1990s. Descendants of the compiler were still in wide use 20 years after it first started generating correct code (notably, Intel's icc "Proton" compiler and the NEC Earth Simulator compiler), and are often used as benchmark targets for new compiler development. MIT and The University of Washington are among the universities that received and used the compiler for advanced research purposes.
The Multiflow compiler was written in C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
. It pre-dated the popular use of C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
(Multiflow was a beta-site for the language). The compiler designers were strong believers in the object-oriented paradigm, however, and the compiler had a rather idiosyncratic style that encapsulated the structures and operations in it. This caused a steep learning curve for the many developers who used it after Multiflow’s demise, but one that was usually considered worth it because of the unique combination of ambitious compiling and rock-solid engineering the compiler offered.
Customers
While a few of Multiflow’s sales went to organizations wishing to learn more about the new VLIW design style, most systems were used for simulation in product development environments: mechanical, aerodynamic, defense, crash dynamics, chemical, and some electronic. Customers ranged from a major metropolitan air-quality board to a major consumer detergent, food and sundries company, along with the expected heavy industry companies, research laboratories and universities. In 1987, GEI Rechnersysteme GmbH, a division of Daimler-BenzDaimler-Benz
Daimler-Benz AG was a German manufacturer of automobiles, motor vehicles, and internal combustion engines; founded in 1926. An Agreement of Mutual Interest - which was valid until year 2000 - was signed on 1 May 1924 between Karl Benz's Benz & Cie., and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, which had...
, began distributing Traces in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
with great success, despite fierce competition from other minisupercomputer companies. In the following three years, Multiflow opened offices or had distributors in most of Western Europe and Japan, and opened offices in many US metropolitan areas.
Multiflow’s end
Multiflow ended operations on March 27, 1990, two days after a large deal contemplated with Digital Equipment Corporation came apart. At that point, the board determined that the prospects for successful additional financing, in the amounts necessary to bring Multiflow to maturity, were too unlikely to justify the company’s continuation. Multiflow’s failure is often blamed anecdotally on “good technology, but bad marketing,” on “good software, but slow, conservative hardware,” on some property of its innovative technology, or even on the isolated location of its headquarters. The more likely cause was that its business plan was incompatible with seismic shifts in the computer industry. Building a full-scale, general-purpose computer company seemed to require many hundreds of millions of dollars (US) by 1990. But the killer microKiller micro
A killer micro is a microprocessor-based machine that infringes on mini, mainframe, or supercomputer performance turf. It originally referred to the replacement of vector supercomputers built with bipolar technology by Massively Parallel Processors assembled from a larger number of lower...
revolution meant there would be a steady march of ever faster and cheaper competition. The economies inherent in microprocessors were inaccessible to startups in general, and incompatible with VLIWs, which would have required too much silicon for the densities of the time. (The first VLIW microprocessor was the Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
Life, the ancestor of today’s TriMedia
TriMedia
TriMedia can refer to:* TriMedia , a media processor made by Philips/NXP Semiconductors* Trimedia International, a European public-relations agency* Tri-Media Productions, a Philipino TV production companySimilarly named pages:...
, delivered several years later.) Since the founding of Sun
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
and SGI
Silicon Graphics Image
Silicon Graphics Image or the RGB file format is the native raster graphics file format for Silicon Graphics workstations.Common file endings are:*SGI or RGB 3 colour channels*RGBA 3 colour channels and alpha...
in the early 1980s, no new general-purpose computer company has succeeded without building computers for which there was an existing large software base, and none of the many minisupercomputer startup companies of the 1980s eventually succeeded.
Corporate culture
Multiflow was staffed by engineers, computer scientists and other computer professionals who were attracted to the combination of a novel and challenging technology, an uphill battle, and the remarkable social experience of working in the most uniformly talented group they were ever likely to be a part of. The system was so novel that its engineering was widely expected to fail. Despite that, even though none of the employees (besides Eckdahl) had ever held senior engineering positions, Trace systems and their software were delivered on time, were robust, and exceeded their promised performance. In great part this was due to the talent level of those attracted to the company, and to the tremendous learning environment it was from the outset.Following Multiflow’s closing, its employees went on to have a widespread effect on the industry. The small core group of engineers and scientists, numbering about 20, produced 4 fellows in major American computer companies (2 of whom were Eckert-Mauchly Award winners), several founders of successful startups, and leaders of major development efforts at large companies. The only nontechnical person in the core group, hired out of business school, went on to lead corporate development at a major research lab. As Multiflow grew, it continued the tradition of hiring highly talented people: as one example, the documentation writer became one of the most influential editors in computer publishing. Multiflow’s effect on the computer industry was very much its people in addition to its technology.
External links
- Architecture and implementation of a VLIW supercomputer
- A VLIW architecture for a trace scheduling compiler
- The Multiflow trace scheduling compiler
- Embedded/VLIW book with much Multiflow-related content
- Very Long Instruction Word architectures and the ELI-512
- Parallel processing: a smart compiler and a dumb machine
- Bulldog: a compiler for vliw architectures