

The Design of the Connection Machine (1994) - robin_reala
http://www.mission-base.com/tamiko/theory/cm_txts/di-frames.html

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Quequau
I've been fascinated with this machine for ages... I can't believe 20 years
have passed so quickly.

From time to time I read about R&D projects which remind of it.

When Adapteva started talking up their Epiphany Chip & Parallella board, I had
hopes that it would be possible to construct a machine which was vaguely
reminiscent. That hasn't really come to pass. They've really struggled to get
the first generation designs out and they've had to step back from older
production schedules. But they haven't completely failed either; you can
actually buy boards with 16 core devices now.
[http://www.adapteva.com/](http://www.adapteva.com/)

The Micron Automata Processor Project is also vaguely similar and interesting
in its own right. [http://www.micron.com/about/innovations/automata-
processing](http://www.micron.com/about/innovations/automata-processing)

~~~
robin_reala
There’s also Intel’s Xeon Phi boards with 72 cores. I suppose the more
interesting thing though about Connection Machines was the routing though,
something that Intel solves with a reasonably standard ring bus.

~~~
leephillips
"the more interesting thing though about Connection Machines was the routing"

Indeed. This part of the article goes into it, including Feynman's
participation: [http://www.mission-base.com/tamiko/theory/cm_txts/di-
ch2.htm...](http://www.mission-base.com/tamiko/theory/cm_txts/di-ch2.html)

While I worked at the Naval Research Lab they acquired a series of these
machines as they came out. They were very fast for "embarrassingly parallel"
problems, and problems where computation dominated communication. I published
a few papers on shocks and detonations in crystals from simulations using
these machines. They used a language called "C*" that was C with parallel
extensions specifically for the CM.

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brandonmenc
Danny Hillis' PhD thesis, "The Connection Machine":
[http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/14719](http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/14719)

A great read.

