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A Connection Machine (CM) is a member of a series of
massively parallel Massively parallel is the term for using a large number of computer processors (or separate computers) to simultaneously perform a set of coordinated computations in parallel. GPUs are massively parallel architecture with tens of thousands of t ...
supercomputers that grew out of doctoral research on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computers by Danny Hillis at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...
(MIT) in the early 1980s. Starting with CM-1, the machines were intended originally for applications in
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...
(AI) and symbolic processing, but later versions found greater success in the field of computational science.


Origin of idea

Danny Hillis and
Sheryl Handler Sheryl Handler (born 1955) is an American businesswoman recognized as one of the founders of Thinking Machines who is the founder and current CEO of Ab Initio. Education and career Handler attended Case Western Reserve University for interior des ...
founded
Thinking Machines Corporation Thinking Machines Corporation was a supercomputer manufacturer and artificial intelligence (AI) company, founded in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1983 by Sheryl Handler and W. Daniel "Danny" Hillis to turn Hillis's doctoral work at the Massachusett ...
(TMC) in
Waltham, Massachusetts Waltham ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early center for the labor movement as well as a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, ...
, in 1983, moving in 1984 to Cambridge, MA. At TMC, Hillis assembled a team to develop what would become the CM-1 Connection Machine, a design for a massively parallel
hypercube In geometry, a hypercube is an ''n''-dimensional analogue of a square () and a cube (). It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions ...
-based arrangement of thousands of
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...
s, springing from his PhD thesis work at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (1985). The dissertation won the ACM Distinguished Dissertation prize in 1985, and was presented as a monograph that overviewed the philosophy, architecture, and software for the first Connection Machine, including information on its data routing between
central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...
(CPU) nodes, its memory handling, and the programming language
Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lispi ...
applied in the parallel machine. Very early concepts contemplated just over a million processors, each connected in a 20-dimensional hypercube, which was later scaled down.


Designs

Each CM-1 microprocessor has its own 4  kilobits of
random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost t ...
(RAM), and the
hypercube In geometry, a hypercube is an ''n''-dimensional analogue of a square () and a cube (). It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions ...
-based array of them was designed to perform the same operation on multiple data points simultaneously, i.e., to execute tasks in single instruction, multiple data (
SIMD Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy. SIMD can be internal (part of the hardware design) and it can be directly accessible through an instruction set architecture (ISA), but it should ...
) fashion. The CM-1, depending on the configuration, has as many as 65,536 individual processors, each extremely simple, processing one bit at a time. CM-1 and its successor ''CM-2'' take the form of a
cube In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. Viewed from a corner it is a hexagon and its net is usually depicted as a cross. The cube is the on ...
1.5 meters on a side, divided equally into eight smaller cubes. Each subcube contains 16
printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich str ...
s and a main processor called a sequencer. Each circuit board contains 32 chips. Each chip contains a router, 16 processors, and 16 RAMs. The CM-1 as a whole has a 12-dimensional
hypercube In geometry, a hypercube is an ''n''-dimensional analogue of a square () and a cube (). It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions ...
-based
routing Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched telephone netw ...
network (connecting the 212 chips), a main RAM, and an input-output processor (a channel controller). Each router contains five buffers to store the data being transmitted when a clear channel is not available. The engineers had originally calculated that seven buffers per chip would be needed, but this made the chip slightly too large to build.
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfre ...
-winning physicist
Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superf ...
had previously calculated that five buffers would be enough, using a differential equation involving the average number of 1 bits in an address. They resubmitted the design of the chip with only five buffers, and when they put the machine together, it worked fine. Each chip is connected to a switching device called a nexus. The CM-1 uses Feynman's algorithm for computing logarithms that he had developed at
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, i ...
for the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
. It is well suited to the CM-1, using as it did, only shifting and adding, with a small table shared by all the processors. Feynman also discovered that the CM-1 would compute the Feynman diagrams for
quantum chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a ty ...
(QCD) calculations faster than an expensive special-purpose machine developed at Caltech. To improve its commercial viability, TMC launched the CM-2 in 1987, adding Weitek 3132
floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be ...
numeric coprocessors and more RAM to the system. Thirty-two of the original one-bit processors shared each numeric processor. The CM-2 can be configured with up to 512 MB of RAM, and a redundant array of independent disks ( RAID)
hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with mag ...
system, called a DataVault, of up to 25 GB. Two later variants of the CM-2 were also produced, the smaller ''CM-2a'' with either 4096 or 8192 single-bit processors, and the faster ''CM-200''. Due to its origins in AI research, the software for the CM-1/2/200 single-bit processor was influenced by the
Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lispi ...
programming language and a version of
Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S20018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived fr ...
, *Lisp (spoken: ''Star-Lisp''), was implemented on the CM-1. Other early languages included
Karl Sims Karl Sims (born 1962) is a computer graphics artist and researcher, who is best known for using particle systems and artificial life in computer animation. Biography Sims received a B.S. from MIT in 1984, and a M.S. from the MIT Media Lab in 1987. ...
' IK and Cliff Lasser's URDU. Much system utility software for the CM-1/2 was written in *Lisp. Many applications for the CM-2, however, were written in C*, a data-parallel superset of ANSI C. With the ''CM-5'', announced in 1991, TMC switched from the CM-2's hypercubic architecture of simple processors to a new and different multiple instruction, multiple data ( MIMD) architecture based on a fat tree network of reduced instruction set computing (RISC)
SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system developed ...
processors. To make programming easier, it was made to simulate a
SIMD Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy. SIMD can be internal (part of the hardware design) and it can be directly accessible through an instruction set architecture (ISA), but it should ...
design. The later ''CM-5E'' replaces the SPARC processors with faster SuperSPARCs. A CM-5 was the fastest computer in the world in 1993 according to the
TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non- distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these updates always coinc ...
list, running 1024 cores with Rpeak of 131.0 G
FLOPS In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate mea ...
, and for several years many of the top 10 fastest computers were CM-5s.


Visual design

Connection Machines were noted for their striking visual design. The CM-1 and CM-2 design teams were led by
Tamiko Thiel Tamiko Thiel (born June 15, 1957) is an American artist, known for her digital art. Her work often explores "the interplay of place, space, the body and cultural identity," and uses augmented reality (AR) as her platform. Thiel is based in Munic ...
. The physical form of the CM-1, CM-2, and CM-200 chassis was a cube-of-cubes, referencing the machine's internal 12-dimensional
hypercube In geometry, a hypercube is an ''n''-dimensional analogue of a square () and a cube (). It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions ...
network, with the red
light-emitting diode A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light ( ...
s (LEDs), by default indicating the processor status, visible through the doors of each cube. By default, when a processor is executing an instruction, its LED is on. In a SIMD program, the goal is to have as many processors as possible working the program at the same time – indicated by having all LEDs being steady on. Those unfamiliar with the use of the LEDs wanted to see the LEDs blink – or even spell out messages to visitors. The result is that finished programs often have superfluous operations to blink the LEDs. The CM-5, in plan view, had a staircase-like shape, and also had large panels of red blinking LEDs. Prominent sculptor-architect
Maya Lin Maya Ying Lin (born October 5, 1959) is an American designer and sculptor. In 1981, while an undergraduate at Yale University, she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memoria ...
contributed to the CM-5 design.


Exhibits

The very first CM-1 is on permanent display in the
Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact ...
, Mountain View, California, which also has two other CM-1s and CM-5. Other Connection Machines survive in the collections of the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...
New York and the Living Computers: Museum + Labs Seattle (CM-2s with LED grids simulating the processor status LEDs), and in the Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...
, the Computer Museum of America in Roswell, Georgia, and the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology (Tekniska Museet) in Stockholm, Sweden.


References in popular culture

A CM-5 was featured in the film ''
Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later also referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton and centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. It began in 1990 whe ...
'' in the control room for the
island An island or isle is a piece of subcontinental land completely surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be ...
(instead of a Cray X-MP supercomputer as in the novel). The computer mainframes in ''
Fallout 3 ''Fallout 3'' is a 2008 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The third major installment in the ''Fallout'' series, it is the first game to be developed by Bethesda after acquiring ...
'' were inspired heavily by the CM-5. Linus Tech Tips
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See also

* Blinkenlights *
Brewster Kahle Brewster Lurton Kahle ( ; born October 21, 1960)Alexa Internet profile
, via juggle.com. accessed Novemb ...
– lead engineer on the Connection Machine projects * Danny Hillis – inventor of the Connection Machine * David E. Shaw – creator of NON-VON machine, which preceded the Connection machine slightly * FROSTBURG – a CM-5 used by the NSA * Goodyear MPP * ICL DAP * MasPar * Parallel computing


References


Further reading

* Hillis, D. 1982 "New Computer Architectures and Their Relationship to Physics or Why CS is No Good", Int J. Theoretical Physics 21 (3/4) 255-262. * Lewis W. Tucker,
George G. Robertson George G. Robertson is an American information visualization expert and senior researcher, Visualization and Interaction (VIBE) Research Group, Microsoft Research. With Stuart K. Card, Jock D. Mackinlay and others he invented a number of Informatio ...
, "Architecture and Applications of the Connection Machine," Computer, vol. 21, no. 8, pp. 26–38, August, 1988. * Arthur Trew and Greg Wilson (eds.) (1991). ''Past, Present, Parallel: A Survey of Available Parallel Computing Systems''. New York: Springer-Verlag. * Charles E. Leiserson, Zahi S. Abuhamdeh, David C. Douglas, Carl R. Feynman, Mahesh N. Ganmukhi, Jeffrey V. Hill, W. Daniel Hillis, Bradley C. Kuszmaul, Margaret A. St. Pierre, David S. Wells, Monica C. Wong, Shaw-Wen Yang, and Robert Zak. "The Network Architecture of the Connection Machine CM-5". Proceedings of the fourth annual ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures. 1992. * W. Daniel Hillis and Lewis W. Tucker. ''The CM-5 Connection Machine: A Scalable Supercomputer''. In
Communications of the ACM ''Communications of the ACM'' is the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). It was established in 1958, with Saul Rosen as its first managing editor. It is sent to all ACM members. Articles are intended for readers with ...
, Vol. 36, No. 11 (November 1993).


External links


Gallery of CM-5 imagesCM-5 ManualsFeynman and the Connection Machine''Liquid Selves'', an animated short film rendered on a CM-2
{{Use dmy dates, date=March 2017 Supercomputers Parallel computing Massively parallel computers Thinking Machines supercomputers Computer-related introductions in 1984