Re: Massively Parallel Computers
Jay Reynolds Freeman (freeman@netcom.com)
Thu, 15 Aug 1996 15:32:22 -0700
Ye Squirrel formerly worked for MasPar Computer Corporation, which
made guess what... We had what the market seemed to consider a very
good SIMD machine, with up to 16384 processors, each approximately
equivalent to an 8086 in processing power, connected in rectangular
array. We had a couple of nice languages to program it in, too.
Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be enough market to support an
industry. (When I say that the market seemed to consider our product
very good, I refer to comparison surveys about reliability,
programmability, and so on.)
I quit MasPar in late '94; within six months they had stopped
producing hardware entirely, and are now -- renamed -- trying to
recover anything they can from a variety of software developed while
they were still producing hardware.
-- Jay Freeman, First Extropian Squirrel