Thinking Machines
Encyclopedia
Thinking Machines Corporation was a supercomputer
manufacturer founded in Waltham, Massachusetts
in 1982 by W. Daniel "Danny" Hillis
and Sheryl Handler
to turn Hillis's doctoral work at MIT on massively parallel computing
architectures into a commercial product called the Connection Machine
. The company moved in 1984 from Waltham to Kendall Square
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
, close to the MIT AI Lab and Thinking Machines' competitor Kendall Square Research
. Besides Kendall Square Research, Thinking Machines' competitors included MasPar
, which made a computer similar to the CM-2
, and Meiko
, whose CS-2 was similar to the CM-5
. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1994, with its hardware and parallel computing software divisions eventually acquired by Sun Microsystems
.
models (in chronological order): the CM-1, CM-2, CM-200, CM-5, and the CM-5E. The CM-1 and 2 came first in models with 64K (65,536) bit-serial processors (16 processors per chip) and later smaller configurations(16,384 (16K) and 4,096 (4K) processors). The Connection Machine was programmed in a variety of specialized languages, including *Lisp
and CM Lisp (derived from Common Lisp
), C* (derived from C
), and CM FORTRAN
. These languages used proprietary compilers to translate code into the parallel instruction set of the Connection Machine. The CM-1 through CM-200 were examples of SIMD
architecture (Single Instruction Multiple Data), while the later CM-5 and CM-5E were MIMD
(Multiple Instructions Multiple Data) using commodity SPARC
processors combined with proprietary vector processors in a "fat tree
" network. Thinking Machines also introduced the first commercial RAID
disk array, called the DataVault, in 1985.
The CM-2 required a Symbolics
3600 LISP machine as a front-end processor; later models used a Sun Microsystems
workstation or VAX
minicomputer.
Thinking Machines developed the C* programming language as an extension of the C programming language for the Connection Machine data parallel computing system.
domain name
(think.com), which it did in May 1985. It became profitable in 1989 thanks to its DARPA contracts, and in 1990 the company had $65 million (USD) in revenue, making it the market leader in parallel supercomputers. In 1991, DARPA reduced its purchases amid criticism it was unfairly subsidizing Thinking Machines at the expense of other vendors like Cray
, IBM
, and in particular, NCUBE
and MasPar
. By 1992 the company was losing money again, due to lack of business; CEO Sheryl Handler
was forced out in the face of public criticism.
Thinking Machines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 1994. The hardware portion of the company was purchased by Sun Microsystems
, and TMC re-emerged as a small software company specializing in parallel software tools for commodity clusters and data mining
software for its installed base and former competitors' parallel supercomputers. In December 1996, the parallel software development business was acquired by Sun Microsystems
, forming the basis of Sun's entry into High Performance Computing.
Thinking Machines continued as a pure data mining company until it was acquired in 1999 by Oracle Corporation
. Oracle later acquired Sun Microsystems, thus re-uniting much of Thinking Machines' intellectual property.
The program WAIS
, developed at Thinking Machines by Brewster Kahle
, would later be influential in starting the Internet Archive
and associated projects including the Rosetta Disk as part of Danny Hillis' Clock of the Long Now
.
Key architect Greg Papadopoulos
later became Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s Chief Technology Officer.
and went on to design the Sun Enterprise
series of parallel computers. The Darwin datamining toolkit, developed by Thinking Machines' Business Supercomputer Group, was purchased by Oracle
. Most of the team that built Darwin left for Dun & Bradstreet
soon after the company entered bankruptcy.
Thinking Machines alumni ("thunkos") were instrumental in forming several parallel computing software start-ups, including Ab Initio Software and Applied Parallel Technologies. Ab Initio is still an independent company; Applied Parallel Technologies, later renamed to Torrent Systems
, was acquired by Ascential Software, which was in turn acquired by IBM
.
Besides Danny Hillis, other noted people who worked for or with the company included Greg Papadopoulos
, David Waltz
, Guy L Steele, Jr., Karl Sims
, Brewster Kahle
, Bradley Kuszmaul, Charles E. Leiserson
, Marvin Minsky
, Carl Feynman, Cliff Lasser, Marvin Denicoff, Alex Vasilevksy, Doug Lenat, Stephen Wolfram
, Eric Lander
, Richard Feynman
, Richard Fishman, Mirza Mehdi, Alan Harshman, Richard Jordan, Alan Mercer, James Bailey, Tsutomu Shimomura
and Jack Schwartz
.
DARPA's Connection Machines were decommissioned by 1996.
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
manufacturer founded in Waltham, Massachusetts
Waltham, Massachusetts
Waltham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, was an early center for the labor movement, and major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the city was a prototype for 19th century industrial city planning,...
in 1982 by W. Daniel "Danny" Hillis
W. Daniel Hillis
William Daniel "Danny" Hillis is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and author. He co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a company that developed the Connection Machine, a parallel supercomputer designed by Hillis at MIT...
and Sheryl Handler
Sheryl Handler
Sheryl Handler was one of the founders of Thinking Machines and is the founder and current CEO of Ab Initio.-External links:* http://www.inc.com/magazine/19950915/2622.html* ....
to turn Hillis's doctoral work at MIT on massively parallel computing
Parallel computing
Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level,...
architectures into a commercial product called the Connection Machine
Connection Machine
The Connection Machine was a series of supercomputers that grew out of Danny Hillis' research in the early 1980s at MIT on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computation...
. The company moved in 1984 from Waltham to Kendall Square
Kendall Square
Kendall Square is a neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the "square" itself at the intersection of Main Street, Broadway, Wadsworth Street, and Third Street...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, close to the MIT AI Lab and Thinking Machines' competitor Kendall Square Research
Kendall Square Research
Kendall Square Research was a supercomputer company headquartered originally in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1986, near MIT. It was co-founded by Steven Frank and Henry Burkhardt III, who had previously helped found Data General and Encore Computer and was one of the original...
. Besides Kendall Square Research, Thinking Machines' competitors included MasPar
MasPar
MasPar Computer Corporation was a minisupercomputer vendor that was founded in 1987 by Jeff Kalb. The company was based in Sunnyvale, California....
, which made a computer similar to the CM-2
Connection Machine
The Connection Machine was a series of supercomputers that grew out of Danny Hillis' research in the early 1980s at MIT on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computation...
, and Meiko
Meiko Scientific
Meiko Scientific Ltd. was a British supercomputer company based in Bristol, founded by members of the design team working on the INMOS transputer microprocessor.-History:...
, whose CS-2 was similar to the CM-5
Connection Machine
The Connection Machine was a series of supercomputers that grew out of Danny Hillis' research in the early 1980s at MIT on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computation...
. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1994, with its hardware and parallel computing software divisions eventually acquired by Sun Microsystems
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...
.
- "We're building a machine that will be proud of us." – Thinking Machines' motto
Products
Thinking Machines produced a number of Connection MachineConnection Machine
The Connection Machine was a series of supercomputers that grew out of Danny Hillis' research in the early 1980s at MIT on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computation...
models (in chronological order): the CM-1, CM-2, CM-200, CM-5, and the CM-5E. The CM-1 and 2 came first in models with 64K (65,536) bit-serial processors (16 processors per chip) and later smaller configurations(16,384 (16K) and 4,096 (4K) processors). The Connection Machine was programmed in a variety of specialized languages, including *Lisp
*Lisp
The *Lisp programming language was conceived of in 1985 by Cliff Lasser and Steve Omohundro as a way of providing an efficient yet high-level language for programming the nascent Connection Machine.-Prelude:At the time the Connection Machine was being designed and built, the only language being...
and CM Lisp (derived from Common Lisp
Common Lisp
Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ANSI INCITS 226-1994 , . From the ANSI Common Lisp standard the Common Lisp HyperSpec has been derived for use with web browsers...
), C* (derived from 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....
), and CM FORTRAN
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
. These languages used proprietary compilers to translate code into the parallel instruction set of the Connection Machine. The CM-1 through CM-200 were examples of SIMD
SIMD
Single instruction, multiple data , is a class of parallel computers in Flynn's taxonomy. It describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data simultaneously...
architecture (Single Instruction Multiple Data), while the later CM-5 and CM-5E were MIMD
MIMD
In computing, MIMD is a technique employed to achieve parallelism. Machines using MIMD have a number of processors that function asynchronously and independently. At any time, different processors may be executing different instructions on different pieces of data...
(Multiple Instructions Multiple Data) using commodity SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
processors combined with proprietary vector processors in a "fat tree
Fat tree
The fat tree network, invented by Charles E. Leiserson of MIT, is a universal network for provably efficient communication. Unlike an ordinary computer scientist's notion of a tree, which has "skinny" links all over, the links in a fat-tree become "fatter" as one moves up the tree towards the root...
" network. Thinking Machines also introduced the first commercial RAID
RAID
RAID is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit...
disk array, called the DataVault, in 1985.
The CM-2 required a Symbolics
Symbolics
Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was...
3600 LISP machine as a front-end processor; later models used a Sun Microsystems
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...
workstation or VAX
VAX
VAX was an instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC's various Programmed Data Processor ISAs...
minicomputer.
Thinking Machines developed the C* programming language as an extension of the C programming language for the Connection Machine data parallel computing system.
Business history
Thinking Machines was the third company to register a .com.com
The domain name com is a generic top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name is derived from commercial, indicating its original intended purpose for domains registered by commercial organizations...
domain name
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
(think.com), which it did in May 1985. It became profitable in 1989 thanks to its DARPA contracts, and in 1990 the company had $65 million (USD) in revenue, making it the market leader in parallel supercomputers. In 1991, DARPA reduced its purchases amid criticism it was unfairly subsidizing Thinking Machines at the expense of other vendors like Cray
Cray
Cray Inc. is an American supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. , was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation , in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995,...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, and in particular, NCUBE
NCUBE
nCUBE was a series of parallel computing computers from the company of the same name. Early generations of the hardware used a custom microprocessor...
and MasPar
MasPar
MasPar Computer Corporation was a minisupercomputer vendor that was founded in 1987 by Jeff Kalb. The company was based in Sunnyvale, California....
. By 1992 the company was losing money again, due to lack of business; CEO Sheryl Handler
Sheryl Handler
Sheryl Handler was one of the founders of Thinking Machines and is the founder and current CEO of Ab Initio.-External links:* http://www.inc.com/magazine/19950915/2622.html* ....
was forced out in the face of public criticism.
Thinking Machines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 1994. The hardware portion of the company was purchased by Sun Microsystems
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 TMC re-emerged as a small software company specializing in parallel software tools for commodity clusters and data mining
Data mining
Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
software for its installed base and former competitors' parallel supercomputers. In December 1996, the parallel software development business was acquired by Sun Microsystems
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...
, forming the basis of Sun's entry into High Performance Computing.
Thinking Machines continued as a pure data mining company until it was acquired in 1999 by Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
. Oracle later acquired Sun Microsystems, thus re-uniting much of Thinking Machines' intellectual property.
The program WAIS
Wide area information server
Wide Area Information Servers or WAIS is a client–server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" to search index databases on remote computers...
, developed at Thinking Machines by Brewster Kahle
Brewster Kahle
Brewster Kahle is a computer engineer, internet entrepreneur, activist, and digital librarian.- Biography :Kahle graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in computer science and engineering, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. The...
, would later be influential in starting the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
and associated projects including the Rosetta Disk as part of Danny Hillis' Clock of the Long Now
Clock of the Long Now
The Clock of the Long Now, also called the 10,000-year clock, is a proposed mechanical clock designed to keep time for 10,000 years. The project to build it is part of the Long Now Foundation....
.
Key architect Greg Papadopoulos
Greg Papadopoulos
Greg Papadopoulos, Ph.D. was Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Sun Microsystems from September 1994 until February 2010. He is the creator and lead proponent for Redshift, a theory on whether technology markets are over or under-served by Moore's Law.Papadopoulos achieved a...
later became Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s Chief Technology Officer.
Dispersal
Many of the hardware people left for Sun MicrosystemsSun 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 went on to design the Sun Enterprise
Sun Enterprise
Sun Enterprise is a range of UNIX server computers produced by Sun Microsystems from 1996 to 2001. The line was launched as the Sun Ultra Enterprise series; the Ultra prefix was dropped around 1998. These systems were based on the 64-bit UltraSPARC microprocessor architecture and related to the...
series of parallel computers. The Darwin datamining toolkit, developed by Thinking Machines' Business Supercomputer Group, was purchased by Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
. Most of the team that built Darwin left for Dun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet is a Fortune 500 public company headquartered in Short Hills, New Jersey, USA that provides information on businesses and corporations for use in credit decisions, B2B marketing and supply chain management...
soon after the company entered bankruptcy.
Thinking Machines alumni ("thunkos") were instrumental in forming several parallel computing software start-ups, including Ab Initio Software and Applied Parallel Technologies. Ab Initio is still an independent company; Applied Parallel Technologies, later renamed to Torrent Systems
Torrent Systems
Torrent Systems, originally named Applied Parallel Technologies , was a parallel computing software company founded in 1993 by Rob Utzschneider and Edward Zyszkowski...
, was acquired by Ascential Software, which was in turn acquired by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
.
Besides Danny Hillis, other noted people who worked for or with the company included Greg Papadopoulos
Greg Papadopoulos
Greg Papadopoulos, Ph.D. was Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Sun Microsystems from September 1994 until February 2010. He is the creator and lead proponent for Redshift, a theory on whether technology markets are over or under-served by Moore's Law.Papadopoulos achieved a...
, David Waltz
David Waltz
David L. Waltz is computer scientist who has made significant contributions in several areas of Artificial Intelligence,including constraint satisfaction, case-based reasoning and the application of massively parallel computation to AI problems...
, Guy L Steele, Jr., Karl Sims
Karl Sims
Karl Sims is a computer graphics artist and researcher, who is best known for using particle systems and artificial life in computer animation....
, Brewster Kahle
Brewster Kahle
Brewster Kahle is a computer engineer, internet entrepreneur, activist, and digital librarian.- Biography :Kahle graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in computer science and engineering, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. The...
, Bradley Kuszmaul, Charles E. Leiserson
Charles E. Leiserson
Charles Eric Leiserson is a computer scientist, specializing in the theory of parallel computing and distributed computing, and particularly practical applications thereof; as part of this effort, he developed the Cilk multithreaded language...
, Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
, Carl Feynman, Cliff Lasser, Marvin Denicoff, Alex Vasilevksy, Doug Lenat, Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram is a British scientist and the chief designer of the Mathematica software application and the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine.- Biography :...
, Eric Lander
Eric Lander
Eric Steven Lander is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a member of the Whitehead Institute, and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has devoted his career toward realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine. He is co-chair of U.S...
, Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
, Richard Fishman, Mirza Mehdi, Alan Harshman, Richard Jordan, Alan Mercer, James Bailey, Tsutomu Shimomura
Tsutomu Shimomura
is a Japanese scientist and computer security expert based in the United States, who became an instant celebrity when he, together with computer journalist John Markoff, tracked down and helped the FBI arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick....
and Jack Schwartz
Jack Schwartz
Jacob Theodore "Jack" Schwartz was an American mathematician, computer scientist, and professor of computer science at the New York University Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He was the designer of the SETL programming language and the NYU Ultracomputer...
.
DARPA's Connection Machines were decommissioned by 1996.
See also
- FROSTBURGFROSTBURGFROSTBURG was a Connection Machine 5 supercomputer used by the US National Security Agency to perform higher-level mathematical calculations. The CM-5 was built by the Thinking Machines Corporation, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at a cost of US$25 million. The system was installed at NSA in...
— a CM-5 used by the National Security AgencyNational Security AgencyThe National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S... - Goodyear MPPGoodyear MPPThe Goodyear Massively Parallel Processor was amassively parallel processing supercomputer built by Goodyear Aerospacefor the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.It was designed to deliver enormous computational power at lower cost than...
- ICL Distributed Array Processor
- MasParMasParMasPar Computer Corporation was a minisupercomputer vendor that was founded in 1987 by Jeff Kalb. The company was based in Sunnyvale, California....
External links
- The Rise and Fall of Thinking Machines, Inc. Magazine, September 1995
- 'Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine' by W. Daniel Hillis
- Thinking Machines by Alex Papadimoulis in The Daily WTFThe Daily WTFThe Daily WTF is a humorous blog dedicated to “Curious Perversions in Information Technology”...
's "Tales from the Interview" - Thinking Machines To File for Bankruptcy John MarkoffJohn MarkoffJohn Markoff is a journalist best known for his work at The New York Times, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick.- Biography :...
, The New York Times, August 16, 1994.