Editing Thinking Machines Corporation

{{Short description|American supercomputer and AI firm (1983–1994)}}
{{Redirect|Thinking Machines||Thinking machines (disambiguation)}}
{{Infobox company
| name             = Thinking Machines Corporation
| native_name      = <!-- Company's name in home country language -->
| native_name_lang = <!-- Use ISO 639-2 code, e.g., "fr" for French. If there is more than one native name, in different languages, enter those names using {{tl|lang}}, instead. -->
| trading_name     = <!-- d/b/a/, doing business as - if different from legal name above -->
| logo             = Thinking Machines Corporation logo.svg
| type             = [[Privately held company|Private]]
| traded_as        = 
| predecessor      = 
| successor        = {{unbulleted list |[[Sun Microsystems]] |[[IBM]] |[[Ab Initio Software]]}}
| founder          = {{unbulleted list |linkwrap=no |[[Sheryl Handler]] |[[Danny Hillis]]}}
| defunct          = {{End date and age|1994}}
| fate             = 
| area_served      = 
| key_people       = 
| industry         = 
| genre            = <!-- Only used with media and publishing companies -->
| products         =  [[Connection Machine]] supercomputers; [[DataVault]] storage
| production       = 
| services         = 
| revenue          = 
| operating_income = 
| net_income       = 
| aum              = <!-- Only used with financial services companies -->
| assets           = 
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| owner            = 
| num_employees    = 1000
| parent           = 
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| subsid           = 
| homepage         = <!-- {{URL|example.com}} -->
| footnotes        = 
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| caption          =
| romanized        =
| former type      = 
| foundation       = {{Start date and age|1983|05}}<br>[[Waltham, Massachusetts|Waltham]], [[Massachusetts]], [[United States|U.S.]] 
| location_city    = [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]], Massachusetts
| location_country = U.S.
| locations        = <!-- Number of locations, stores, offices, etc. -->
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'''Thinking Machines Corporation''' was a [[supercomputer]] manufacturer and [[artificial intelligence]] (AI) company,<ref>{{cite journal|title=Thinking Machines|journal=Technology Review|date=November 1, 2006|url=https://www.technologyreview.com/s/406781/thinking-machines/}}</ref> founded in [[Waltham, Massachusetts]], in 1983 by [[Sheryl Handler]] and [[Danny Hillis|W. Daniel "Danny" Hillis]] to turn Hillis's doctoral work at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) on massively [[parallel computing]] architectures into a commercial product named the [[Connection Machine]]. The company moved in 1984 from Waltham to [[Kendall Square]] in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]], close to the [[MIT AI Lab]]. Thinking Machines made some of the most powerful supercomputers of the time, and by 1993 the four fastest computers in the world were Connection Machines.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.top500.org/statistics/sublist/ |title=Sublist Generator |website=Top500.org: Top500 Supercomputer Sites |language=en |access-date=2019-01-03}}</ref> The firm filed for [[bankruptcy]] in 1994; its hardware and parallel computing software divisions were acquired in time by [[Sun Microsystems]].

==Supercomputer products==
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 architecture|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 language]]s, including [[*Lisp]] and CM Lisp (derived from [[Common Lisp]]), [[C*]] (derived by Thinking Machines from [[C (programming language)|C]]), and CM [[Fortran]]. These languages used [[Proprietary software|proprietary]] [[compiler]]s 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'' ([[Single instruction, multiple data|SIMD]]) architecture using a [[Hypercube_internetwork_topology|hypercube interconnect]] to reduce hop-count and latency, while the later CM-5 and CM-5E were ''multiple instruction, multiple data'' ([[Multiple instruction, multiple data|MIMD]]) that combined commodity [[SPARC]] processors and proprietary vector processors in a ''[[fat tree]]'' [[computer network]].

All Connection Machine models required a serial front-end processor, which was most often a [[Sun Microsystems]] workstation, but on early models could also be a [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] (DEC) [[VAX]] [[minicomputer]] or [[Symbolics]] [[Lisp machine]].

Thinking Machines also introduced an early commercial ''redundant array of independent disks'' ([[RAID]]) 2 disk array, the [[DataVault]], circa 1988.<ref>{{cite patent |country=US |number=4,899,342 |status= |title=Method and Apparatus for Operating Multi-unit Array of Memories |pubdate= |gdate= |fdate=1988-02-01 |pridate= |inventor= |invent1= |invent2= |assign1= |assign2= |class= |url=}}</ref>

{{Gallery
|title=Thinking Machines computers
|width=150
|height=150
|align=center
|File:Connection Machine CM-1 (1985) - Computer History Museum (2007-11-10 22.57.53 by Carlo Nardone).jpg|Thinking Machines CM-1 at [[Computer History Museum]]. See also a [[:File:Connection Machine CM-1 (detail) - Computer Museum (2007-11-10 22.58.06 by Carlo Nardone).jpg|detailed photo]].
|File:Thinking machines cm2.jpg|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.
|File:Thinking Machines Connection Machine CM-5 Frostburg 2.jpg|Thinking Machines [[CM-5]] ''[[FROSTBURG]]'' at the [[National Cryptologic Museum]].
|File:Thinking Machines CM200-IMG 7294.jpg|Thinking Machines CM-200 at the Bolo Computer Museum at the [[École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne]] (EPFL), [[Lausanne]].
}}
{{Gallery
|title=
|width=150
|height=150
|align=center
|File:Connection Machine CM-2 and DataVault at Computer Museum of America.webp|CM-2 at [[Mimms Museum of Technology and Art]]
|File:MoMA Exhibition, CM-2 (38801396912) (clip1).jpg|CM-2 at the [[Museum of Modern Art]] (MoMA), NYC.
|File:Connection Machine CM-5 (FROSTBERG) at National Cryptologic Museum (2) edit.jpg|CM-5 at the [[National Cryptologic Museum]]
|Thinking Machines CM200-IMG 7294 (bright).jpg|Single cube of CM200.<br/>(On the full configuration, it consists of 8 cubes)
}}

==Business history==
[[File:Simv.jpg|right|thumbnail|100px|Advertisement poster at the [[National Cryptologic Museum]]]]
In May 1985, Thinking Machines became the third company to [[List of the oldest currently-registered Internet domain names|register]] a [[.com]] [[domain name]] (think.com).  The company became profitable in 1989, in part because of its contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ([[DARPA]]).<ref>{{cite news |title=U.S. Awards Computer Contract |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/29/business/us-awards-computer-contract.html |work=New York Times |date=29 November 1989 |last1=Markoff |first1=John }}</ref>  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.

The program ''[[wide area information server]]'' (WAIS), developed at Thinking Machines by [[Brewster Kahle]], would later be influential in starting the [[Internet Archive]] and associated projects, including the [[Rosetta Project]] as part of Danny Hillis' [[Clock of the Long Now]].

Architect [[Greg Papadopoulos]] later became Sun Microsystems's [[chief technology officer]] (CTO).

==Dispersal==
Many of the hardware people left for [[Sun Microsystems]] and went on to design the [[Sun Enterprise]] series of parallel computers. The ''Darwin'' [[data mining]] toolkit, developed by Thinking Machines' Business Supercomputer Group, was purchased by [[Oracle Corporation|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]].

Besides Hillis, other noted people who worked for or with the company included Robert Millstein, [[Greg Papadopoulos]], [[David Waltz]], [[Guy L. Steele Jr.]], [[Karl Sims]], [[Brewster Kahle]], Bradley Kuszmaul, [[Carl Feynman]], Cliff Lasser, Marvin Denicoff, Alex Vasilevsky, Allan Torres, [https://techonomy.com/people/richard-fishman/ Richard Fishman], Mirza Mehdi, Alan Harshman, Richard Jordan, Alan Mercer, James Bailey, [[Tsutomu Shimomura]]. Among the early corporate fellows of Thinking Machines were [[Marvin Minsky]], [[Douglas Lenat]], [[Stephen Wolfram]], [[Tomaso Poggio]], [[Richard Feynman]], and [[Jack Schwartz]], later joined by [[Charles E. Leiserson]], [[Alan Edelman]], [[Eric Lander]], and [[Lennart Johnsson]].

[[DARPA]]'s Connection Machines were decommissioned by 1996.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/computers/gallery/index.jsp |title=SCD supercomputers, past and present (grouped by vendor) |website=Computational & Information Systems Lab (CISL), Supercomputer Gallery |publisher=National Center for Atmospheric Research }}</ref>

== References in popular culture ==
In the 1993 film ''[[Jurassic Park (film)|Jurassic Park]]'', Connection Machines (non-functioning dummies) are visible in the park's control room, programmer Dennis Nedry mentions "eight Connection Machines"<ref>[http://www.moviequotedb.com/movies/jurassic-park/quote_12178.html Movie Quotes Database]</ref> and a video about dinosaur cloning mentions "Thinking Machines supercomputers".

In the 1996 film ''[[Mission: Impossible (film)|Mission Impossible]]'', [[Luther Stickell]] asks Franz Krieger for "Thinking Machine laptops" to help hack into the [[CIA]]'s [[George Bush Center for Intelligence|Langley]] supercomputer.

[[Tom Clancy]]'s novel ''[[Rainbow Six (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 system]]s 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.

==See also==
{{commons category}}
* [[FROSTBURG]] – CM-5 used by the [[National Security Agency]]
* [[Goodyear MPP]]
* [[ICL Distributed Array Processor]]
* [[MasPar]]
* [[Parsytec]]
* [[SUPRENUM]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.inc.com/magazine/19950915/2622.html The Rise and Fall of Thinking Machines], ''Inc. Magazine'', September 1995
* [http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ 'Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine' by W. Daniel Hillis]
* [http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Thinking-Machines.aspx Thinking Machines] by Alex Papadimoulis in [[The Daily WTF]]'s "Tales from the Interview"
* [https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/16/business/company-news-thinking-machines-to-file-for-bankruptcy.html Thinking Machines To File for Bankruptcy] [[John Markoff]], The New York Times, August 16, 1994.

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Thinking Machines Corporation| ]]
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