11 ms·

The Design of the Connection Machine (1994)

99 points by boulos 5y ago

tda 5y ago
I just saw a nice keynote by David Beazley on how he installed python on a CM5 at Los Alamos, very entertaining
- Banana699 5y ago
  What OS was it running? or did he compile Cpython from source?
  - convolvatron 5y ago
    CM5 used solaris front ends, back ends didn't have an OS.
  - tda 5y ago
    This is the talk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4RSht_aV7AU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4RSht_aV7AU, it is a full hour. Quite enjoyable but light on in depth technical stuff. Don't recall hem mentioning how git python running technically, it is more about how he came in the position to do so in the first place.
kortex 5y ago
> Perhaps we need to do exactly the opposite, and look at the so-called primitive or pre-industrial cultures to find out how they use ornament to increase the significance and worth of the objects they produce. I think that ornamentation and aesthetics are often overlooked or minimized in the pursuit of optimization, typically cost reduction. But this article and this line in particular elucidates why we stand to benefit from keeping aesthetics in mind.
yholio 5y ago
The final black hypercube design looks modern even for contemporary standards.
- qubex 5y ago
  And it probably always will, because it’s so stark and devoid of period references that it’ll never look more or less in context. That’s the point, I think.
voldacar 5y ago
This thing has so much soul. Its physical design is intentional; its form reflects its structure and function. Supercomputers now are just big racks with maybe a cool graphic printed on the side, which makes me kind of sad.
- bouvin 5y ago
  Agreed. Seems The Connection Machine was the last gorgeous supercomputer.
timmg 5y ago
Anyone know how many CM-1s and CM-2s were made? I spent a few minutes googling and got nothing. Did they sell 10s of them or 100s of them or more?
- convolvatron 5y ago
  from my very hazy memory, there were only a few CM-1s made. maybe 10 in total outside TMC? CM-2s showed up at most supercomputer centers in the US, and even some universities. I think Yale(?) had an 8k. there were several at black sites - at least another 8 machines I guess. so at least tens, but I don't think 100s
  - timmg 5y ago
    Ok, thanks. It occured to me how cool it would be to pick one up on eBay. Obviously, I didn't find one. (Not that would have actually bought one.) I guess this is why :)
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      haha - first thing I did when I saw the hypercube/nuerons tshirt was check ebay - no dice!
      - fao_ 5y ago
        In the article it's referred to as the "CM-1 tshirt design" so I plugged the first two words into duckduckgo and the first result led me to someone who is selling the tshirts: http://www.tamikothiel.com/cm/cm-tshirt.html http://www.tamikothiel.com/cm/cm-tshirt.html
        jazzyjackson 5y ago
        hey thanks! goes to show i need to step out of my ebay bubble from time to time
        nickdothutton 5y ago
steppi 5y ago
William Daniel Hillis's dissertation about the Connection Machine is available online [1] and is a fascinating read. It generated some interesting past discussion here [2]. I started reading through the dissertation earlier this year with a hope of gathering enough information to reverse engineer Feynman's partial differential equation based method to calculate the number of buffer's needed per chip. I had to drop that project for lack of time but came away really impressed with the considerations that went into the design of the CM. [1] https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/14719/18524280-MIT.pdf https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/14719/1852428... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281637
- ssivark 5y ago
  I’ve always been curious about both the CM and Feynman’s PDE based approach, but never found any clear writing on the topic. If anyone is digging into this, I’m happy to assist in any way I can (I have a theoretical physics background, fwiw). Feel free to hit me up (email in profile).
mark_l_watson 5y ago
I was fortunate enough to have been paid to write some Star Lisp code for the CM-1 that was provided to my company via DARPA. We also received a Butterfly Machine but I never used it.
darkstarsys 5y ago
I loved working at TMC. Amazing collection of some of the smartest and most interesting people.
- dmd 5y ago
  Did/do you work at Ab Initio too, or just TM?
- voldacar 5y ago
  got any cool stories?
timmg 5y ago
Someone should make a mini CM-2 -- desktop size. With the LEDs and everything. And then some kind of emulator (or FPGA) on the inside that could actually run their code. Maybe connect to a desktop via USB or something. I wonder if the compiler/whatever for the host machine is available anywhere?
- mepian 5y ago
  There is the *Lisp (StarLisp) simulator at least: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/impl/starlisp/0.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/l... This seems to be a GitHub mirror: https://github.com/LdBeth/star-lisp https://github.com/LdBeth/star-lisp
- torgoguys 5y ago
  I have made a ~10% model of one with lights and all. The innards do not run CM software though. But I'd did try to stay true to the overall spirit of the design. I have a bunch of Intel Edison boards slotted into the cubes that can slide in and out to add processing capacity for my model setup. I copied the overall gist of the original cooling solution too. I agree that there should be kits for this sort of thing. The machine looks so cool.
- convolvatron 5y ago
  if anyone is interested..I'm sure there are other people more qualified, but I did spend quite a bit of time working with Paris and the underlying microcode system CMIS. it really wouldn't be that huge of a project to undertake. (@gmail.com) one FPGA cell looks a lot like a CM processor, but since it gets reprogrammed every cycle, idk that that direct mapping works. but something would. an interesting question though is the point. CM software wasn't anything like 'normal' software...so it took some subs tantial work to port codes. would anyone really use such a thing or it is just a curiosity? a _really_ cool project would be implementing CM-LISP edit: everything except the router that is. that would be a bit of trouble
  - bosquefrio 5y ago
    @convolvatron Why do you say that implementing CM-LISP would be a really cool project?
SavantIdiot 5y ago
I worked as a CPU architect at Intel for a decade. Never once did anyone solve an architecture problem the way Feynman did on CM-1. From wikipedia: "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-winning physicist Richard Feynman had previously calculated that five buffers would be enough, using a differential equation involving the average number of 1 bits in an address." He determined the buffer size using a differential equation? Modern engineers would run trillions of simulation cycles of an RTL model and sweep the buffer size for thousands of workloads to find the inflection point, and present an Excel chart in a meeting. Then the design engineers would determine if there was enough die area to implement the buffer size, and even if there wasn't area but the performance was significant, they would have to implement it. Engineering now vs engineering then.
- Banana699 5y ago
  >Engineering now vs engineering then. Your post was great up until this. I don't like the 'Things were great in the past but look at us now' tone in general (doesn't mean it's not true in some cases), but also that's not what the historical incident shows : the "engineers then" were just as flabbergasted at Feynman's approach as anybody, and didn't trust the results. Feynman was a physicist, not an engineer. Differentials and integrals were his breakfast and dinner for ~50 years at the time. You and his colleagues at the CM team saw Outsider's Effect in action: where a talented individual, with a mind fresh of dogmas and established approaches, manage to repurpose the tools they practiced and honed in a different domain to engage and destroy a target in another domain from a highly unusual angle. Like startups, it doesn't always work. But when it works, it's fantastic.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    You read way too much into that. I never said A was better than B, you just assumed and then got on your soap box to lecture me. Also, I don't care what you like or if you think my post is great.
    - 5y ago
peter303 5y ago
The mid-1980s to mid-1990s was the golden age of computer architecture experimentation. Computer aided circuit design meant a relatively small group of engineers could design and fabricate a new CPU design. The competition from rapidly evolving commodity CPUs ended this era. It took 3-5 years to make a new generation special purpose CPU and financially justify manufacture. By that time the commodity CPU price-performance increased an order of magnitude and caught up. Few of these designs ever produced a second generation. And I think only Convex made it to gen-3 before folding.

99 points by boulos 5y ago

tda 5y ago

I just saw a nice keynote by David Beazley on how he installed python on a CM5 at Los Alamos, very entertaining

Banana699 5y ago
What OS was it running? or did he compile Cpython from source?
- convolvatron 5y ago
  CM5 used solaris front ends, back ends didn't have an OS.
- tda 5y ago
  This is the talk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4RSht_aV7AU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4RSht_aV7AU, it is a full hour. Quite enjoyable but light on in depth technical stuff. Don't recall hem mentioning how git python running technically, it is more about how he came in the position to do so in the first place.

kortex 5y ago

> Perhaps we need to do exactly the opposite, and look at the so-called primitive or pre-industrial cultures to find out how they use ornament to increase the significance and worth of the objects they produce. I think that ornamentation and aesthetics are often overlooked or minimized in the pursuit of optimization, typically cost reduction. But this article and this line in particular elucidates why we stand to benefit from keeping aesthetics in mind.

yholio 5y ago

The final black hypercube design looks modern even for contemporary standards.

qubex 5y ago
And it probably always will, because it’s so stark and devoid of period references that it’ll never look more or less in context. That’s the point, I think.

voldacar 5y ago

This thing has so much soul. Its physical design is intentional; its form reflects its structure and function. Supercomputers now are just big racks with maybe a cool graphic printed on the side, which makes me kind of sad.

bouvin 5y ago
Agreed. Seems The Connection Machine was the last gorgeous supercomputer.

timmg 5y ago

Anyone know how many CM-1s and CM-2s were made? I spent a few minutes googling and got nothing. Did they sell 10s of them or 100s of them or more?

convolvatron 5y ago
from my very hazy memory, there were only a few CM-1s made. maybe 10 in total outside TMC? CM-2s showed up at most supercomputer centers in the US, and even some universities. I think Yale(?) had an 8k. there were several at black sites - at least another 8 machines I guess. so at least tens, but I don't think 100s
- timmg 5y ago
  Ok, thanks. It occured to me how cool it would be to pick one up on eBay. Obviously, I didn't find one. (Not that would have actually bought one.) I guess this is why :)
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    haha - first thing I did when I saw the hypercube/nuerons tshirt was check ebay - no dice!
    - fao_ 5y ago
      In the article it's referred to as the "CM-1 tshirt design" so I plugged the first two words into duckduckgo and the first result led me to someone who is selling the tshirts: http://www.tamikothiel.com/cm/cm-tshirt.html http://www.tamikothiel.com/cm/cm-tshirt.html
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        hey thanks! goes to show i need to step out of my ebay bubble from time to time
      - nickdothutton 5y ago

steppi 5y ago

William Daniel Hillis's dissertation about the Connection Machine is available online [1] and is a fascinating read. It generated some interesting past discussion here [2]. I started reading through the dissertation earlier this year with a hope of gathering enough information to reverse engineer Feynman's partial differential equation based method to calculate the number of buffer's needed per chip. I had to drop that project for lack of time but came away really impressed with the considerations that went into the design of the CM. [1] https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/14719/18524280-MIT.pdf https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/14719/1852428... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281637

ssivark 5y ago
I’ve always been curious about both the CM and Feynman’s PDE based approach, but never found any clear writing on the topic. If anyone is digging into this, I’m happy to assist in any way I can (I have a theoretical physics background, fwiw). Feel free to hit me up (email in profile).

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I was fortunate enough to have been paid to write some Star Lisp code for the CM-1 that was provided to my company via DARPA. We also received a Butterfly Machine but I never used it.

darkstarsys 5y ago

I loved working at TMC. Amazing collection of some of the smartest and most interesting people.

dmd 5y ago
Did/do you work at Ab Initio too, or just TM?
voldacar 5y ago
got any cool stories?

timmg 5y ago

Someone should make a mini CM-2 -- desktop size. With the LEDs and everything. And then some kind of emulator (or FPGA) on the inside that could actually run their code. Maybe connect to a desktop via USB or something. I wonder if the compiler/whatever for the host machine is available anywhere?

mepian 5y ago
There is the *Lisp (StarLisp) simulator at least: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/impl/starlisp/0.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/l... This seems to be a GitHub mirror: https://github.com/LdBeth/star-lisp https://github.com/LdBeth/star-lisp
torgoguys 5y ago
I have made a ~10% model of one with lights and all. The innards do not run CM software though. But I'd did try to stay true to the overall spirit of the design. I have a bunch of Intel Edison boards slotted into the cubes that can slide in and out to add processing capacity for my model setup. I copied the overall gist of the original cooling solution too. I agree that there should be kits for this sort of thing. The machine looks so cool.
convolvatron 5y ago
if anyone is interested..I'm sure there are other people more qualified, but I did spend quite a bit of time working with Paris and the underlying microcode system CMIS. it really wouldn't be that huge of a project to undertake. (@gmail.com) one FPGA cell looks a lot like a CM processor, but since it gets reprogrammed every cycle, idk that that direct mapping works. but something would. an interesting question though is the point. CM software wasn't anything like 'normal' software...so it took some subs tantial work to port codes. would anyone really use such a thing or it is just a curiosity? a _really_ cool project would be implementing CM-LISP edit: everything except the router that is. that would be a bit of trouble
- bosquefrio 5y ago
  @convolvatron Why do you say that implementing CM-LISP would be a really cool project?

SavantIdiot 5y ago

I worked as a CPU architect at Intel for a decade. Never once did anyone solve an architecture problem the way Feynman did on CM-1. From wikipedia: "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-winning physicist Richard Feynman had previously calculated that five buffers would be enough, using a differential equation involving the average number of 1 bits in an address." He determined the buffer size using a differential equation? Modern engineers would run trillions of simulation cycles of an RTL model and sweep the buffer size for thousands of workloads to find the inflection point, and present an Excel chart in a meeting. Then the design engineers would determine if there was enough die area to implement the buffer size, and even if there wasn't area but the performance was significant, they would have to implement it. Engineering now vs engineering then.

Banana699 5y ago
>Engineering now vs engineering then. Your post was great up until this. I don't like the 'Things were great in the past but look at us now' tone in general (doesn't mean it's not true in some cases), but also that's not what the historical incident shows : the "engineers then" were just as flabbergasted at Feynman's approach as anybody, and didn't trust the results. Feynman was a physicist, not an engineer. Differentials and integrals were his breakfast and dinner for ~50 years at the time. You and his colleagues at the CM team saw Outsider's Effect in action: where a talented individual, with a mind fresh of dogmas and established approaches, manage to repurpose the tools they practiced and honed in a different domain to engage and destroy a target in another domain from a highly unusual angle. Like startups, it doesn't always work. But when it works, it's fantastic.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  You read way too much into that. I never said A was better than B, you just assumed and then got on your soap box to lecture me. Also, I don't care what you like or if you think my post is great.
  - 5y ago

peter303 5y ago

The mid-1980s to mid-1990s was the golden age of computer architecture experimentation. Computer aided circuit design meant a relatively small group of engineers could design and fabricate a new CPU design. The competition from rapidly evolving commodity CPUs ended this era. It took 3-5 years to make a new generation special purpose CPU and financially justify manufacture. By that time the commodity CPU price-performance increased an order of magnitude and caught up. Few of these designs ever produced a second generation. And I think only Convex made it to gen-3 before folding.