From: ephraim@Think.COM (Ephraim Vishniac) Subject: Re: New Machine from TMC Date: 30 Oct 91 17:01:31 GMT Sender: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu (Steve Stevenson) Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu In article adamb@cs.utk.edu (Adam Beguelin) writes: >Can someone please post a summary of the new machine that >was to be announced today? Please let us know all the new >technical details! Here are the press releases. They're short on technical detail, I realize, but folks who are seriously interested in the new machine should contact TMC and ask for a copy of the _CM-5_Technical_Summary_. For assorted outside views of the announcement, see articles in today's editions of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Herald, and Boston Globe. 11:54 THINKING MACHINES CORPORATION ANNOUNCES CM-5 SUPERCOMPUTER CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Thinking Machines Corporation today announced its Connection Machine(R) model CM-5(tm) supercomputer, the first with a complete parallel architecture that scales to a TeraFlops in performance. At the same time, the company announced important advances in software scalability that bring supercomputing firmly into open computing for the first time. Among these advances is a collaboration between Thinking Machines, IBM and Sun to pursue a common scalable programming standard for scientific computing. CM-5 system prices start at $1.4 million. "We are the first to combine a TeraFlops architecture with the production computing features that bring parallel supercomputing squarely into the mainstream," said Sheryl Handler, company president. "First customers include the Army High Performance Computer Research Center, Schlumberger, University of Wisconsin, University of California at Berkeley, and the Northeast Parallel Architecture Center at Syracuse." John Sell, president of the Minnesota Supercomputer Center, which installed the first CM-5 for the Army High Performance Computer Research Center in August, underscored the commercial potential. "CM-5 is the first highly parallel supercomputer that can be seriously considered for commercial production environments." Thinking Machines' chief scientist Danny Hillis, emphasized the importance of scalable architecture. "Scalability completely changes the questions we ask about performance. Since you can always increase performance by adding more processors, the question becomes how far can it grow, and does the I/O, communications, and reliability grow in proportion with the size of the system. CM-5 is the first supercomputer that is genuinely scalable in this sense." Each CM-5 node is a 22-Mips RISC microprocessor with four vector pipes providing a total of 128 MFlops peak speed. All components of the CM-5 system architecture, including software, I/0, and communications networks, scale in a balanced way up to systems with 16,000 processing nodes. Until now, industry growth has been hampered by competing forms of parallel architecture called "SIMD" and "MIMD." Becuase of CM-5's innovative architecture, users no longer need to compromise between the programming simplicity of SIMD and the flexibility of MIMD. The new system provides both, and includes the synchronization hardware needed for data parallel computing. Programs running different forms of parallelism may be run simultaneously under control of the system's full timesharing operating system. Larry Smarr, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois, said, "The most exciting aspect of the CM-5 is its universal architecture which will provide one-stop shopping for 1990's applications developers. I really admire the long-range vision of Thinking Machines. With the CM-5 we have a scalable architecture that will carry us all the way to a TFlops." Hillis expanded on the importance of scalable software. "With today's networks, scientists use mainframes one minute, workstations the next, and supercomputers the next. In the past, these performance levels have been locked into their own proprietary language standards. Open, scalable software gives users the ability to run the same Fortran on a Sun workstation, an IBM vector supercomputer, and a TeraFlops Connection Machine system. This means that third-party software developers will be able to maintain a single source for all types of machines." DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) funded the original development of scalable architecture as part of the U.S. High Performance Computing Initiative, and is taking a leadership role in guiding the industry transition to scalable software. The transition to scalable software is the focus of Thinking Machines' initiative in common scalable programming standards for scientific computing. Joining Thinking Machines in this effort are IBM and Sun Microsystems. This announcement is significant because the three companies span the range of scientific computing, from workstations to shared memory multiprocessors to Grand Challenge supercomputers. Thinking Machines Corporation is the world's leading manufacturer of highly parallel supercomputers and a pioneer in scalable computing techniques. The company, which is privately held, is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., with offices worldwide. ---- NOTE: Connection Machine is a registered trademark of Thinking Machines Corporation. CM-5 is a trademark of Thinking Machines Corporation. /CONTACT: Tim Browne of Thinking Machines Corporation, 617-234-5525/ 11:39 EST PR NEWSWIRE STORY 28 PAGE 1 OF 3 11:54 NEW INITIATIVE IN OPEN, SCALABLE, FORTRAN PROGRAMMING ANNOUNCED CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Thinking Machines Corporation announced today an initiative to create a common scalable programming standard for scientific computing. Joining Thinking Machines in this effort are IBM and Sun Microsystems. This announcement is significant because the three companies span the range of scientific computing, from workstations to shared memory multiprocessors to Grand Challenge supercomputers. Danny Hillis, chief scientist of Thinking Machines, explained the importance of scalable software. "With today's networks, scientists use mainframes one minute, workstations the next, and supercomputers the next. In the past, these performance levels have been locked into their own proprietary language standards. The future belongs to scalable applications that run unchanged up and down performance levels." Dr. David S. Wehrly, director of high performance supercomputing systems at IBM, positioned his company's supercomputing directions. "Data parallel (such as the Fortran 90 array language) is IBM's direction toward exploiting supercomputer parallel accelerators. IBM intends to participate in external activities focused on languages and environments to exploit parallel processing." Thinking Machines and IBM have previously announced a joint development agreement between the companies. Thinking Machines pioneered data parallel programming. Fortran 90 array language is widely used on the company's Connection Machine(R) supercomputers. Jon Kannegaard, vice-president of SunPro, a Sun Microsystems Inc. business, talked about the importance of open scalable software to his company. "Sun makes workstations and offers shared memory multiprocessors. We are enthused about Thinking Machines-compatible array extensions in Fortran 90 as a standard, scalable, programming model for these multiprocessors. It is the right way to program shared memory machines as well as massively parallel machines." Scalable software techniques complete the open computing revolution that started with portability. Portability allows the same program to run unchanged across vendors. Scalability allows the same program to run unchanged up and down performance classes. Thinking Machines Corporation is the world's leading manufacturer of highly parallel supercomputers and the pioneer in scalable computing techniques. The architecture of its CM-5(tm) supercomputer is the first to scale to a trillion operations per second (TeraFlops), the performance level required by the new set of computing applications called the Grand Challenges. ---- NOTE: Connection Machine is a registered trademark of Thinking Machines Corporation. CM-5 is a trademark of Thinking Machines Corporation. /CONTACT: Tim Browne of Thinking Machines Corporation, 617-234-5525/ 11:38 EST