On the hardware side, Thinking Machines produced several Connection Machine models (in chronological order): the CM-1, CM-2, CM-200, CM-5, and CM-5E. The CM-1 and 2 came first in models with 64K (65,536) bit-serial processors (16 processors per chip) and later, the smaller 16K and 4K configurations. The Connection Machine was programmed in a variety of specialized programming languages, including *Lisp and CM Lisp (derived from Common Lisp), C* (derived by Thinking Machines from C), and CM Fortran. These languages used proprietarycompilers to translate code into the parallel instruction set of the Connection Machine. The CM-1 through CM-200 were examples of single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) architecture, while the later CM-5 and CM-5E were multiple instruction, multiple data (MIMD) that combined commodity SPARC processors and proprietary vector processors in a fat treecomputer network.
In May 1985, Thinking Machines became the third company to register a .comdomain name (think.com). It became profitable in 1989, in part because of its contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).[4] The next year, they sold $65 million (USD) worth of hardware and software, making them the market leader in parallel supercomputers. Thinking Machines' primary supercomputer competitor was Cray Research. Other parallel computing competitors included nCUBE, nearby Kendall Square Research, and MasPar, which made a computer similar to the CM-2, and Meiko Scientific, whose CS-2 was similar to the CM-5. In 1991, DARPA and the United States Department of Energy reduced their purchases amid criticism they were unfairly favoring Thinking Machines at the expense of Cray, nCUBE, and MasPar. Tightening export laws also prevented the most powerful Connection Machines from being exported. By 1992, the company was losing money, and CEO Sheryl Handler was forced out.
In August 1994, Thinking Machines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 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 section was also acquired by Sun Microsystems.
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.
Many of the hardware people left for Sun Microsystems and went on to design the Sun Enterprise series of parallel computers. The Darwindata mining toolkit, developed by Thinking Machines' Business Supercomputer Group, was purchased by Oracle. Most of the team that built Darwin had already left for Dun & Bradstreet soon after Thinking Machines Corporation entered bankruptcy in 1994.
Thinking Machines alumni (known as "Thunkos") helped create several parallel computing software start-ups, including Ab Initio Software; and Applied Parallel Technologies, which was later renamed Torrent Systems and acquired by Ascential Software, which was in turn acquired by IBM.
DARPA's Connection Machines were decommissioned by 1996.[5]
References in popular culture
In the 1993 film Jurassic Park, Connection Machines (non-functioning dummies) are visible in the park's control room, programmer Dennis Nedry mentions "eight Connection Machines"[6] and a video about dinosaur cloning mentions "Thinking Machines supercomputers".
Tom Clancy's novel Rainbow Six speaks of the NSA's "star machine from a company gone bankrupt, the Super-Connector from Thinking Machines, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts" in the NSA's basement. In addition, in The Bear and the Dragon says the National Security Agency could crack nearly any book or cipher with one of three custom operating systems designed for a Thinking Machines supercomputer.
In the 2008 video game Fallout 3, it is mentioned that the pre-war firm that made the computer systems for Vaults is called Think Machine.
Thinking Machines CM-1 at Computer History Museum. See also a detailed photo.
Thinking Machines CM-2 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. One of the face plates is partly removed to show the circuit boards inside.
Thinking Machines CM-200 at the Bolo Computer Museum at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne.
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