As a developer you had explicit access to them, so you could use them for debugging. A lot of times, they were just running an RNG to look cool though.
I'm saying this because I need this information, and the fastest way to get information is to state that it's impossible or doesn't exist.
Then, CM-5 did have the option of having "artistic" or "random patterns" on it, apparently designed or co-designed by Maya Lin. IIRC, the CM-5 is the one appearing in Jurassic Park.
I don't know if is there any firmware code or hardware design available to check how that function worked. Maybe the people from the Computer History Museum knows something. They have the first CM-1 and have at least one CM-5.
Check their library to see if maybe some of the technical docs say something:
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/search-c...
I seem to recall an intel i960 was used to drive leds on at least one model.
<quote>
By default, when a processor is executing an instruction, its LED is on. In a SIMD program, the goal is to have as many processors as possible working the program at the same time – indicated by having all LEDs being steady on. Those unfamiliar with the use of the LEDs wanted to see the LEDs blink – or even spell out messages to visitors. The result is that finished programs often have superfluous operations to blink the LEDs.
</quote>
Yes I'd unironically watch defrag work.
For fans of computing history and/or Feynman, this article about his time with, and contributions to, Thinking Machines and the Connection Machine is a great read!
https://longnow.org/ideas/richard-feynman-and-the-connection...
...boy i wouldn't bet against him..
I guess that you'll need to do customs paperwork (or maybe not, can't remember how Japan does with custom duties on items of small price)
You can see it in action here <https://www.paulrand.design/work/NeXT-Computers.html>
I was incredibly lucky to have been funded to write StarLisp code for the original CM-1 machine. CM-1 was a SIMD architecture, the later models were MIMD. Think of the physical layout being a 2D grid or processors with one edge being for I/O. That was a long time ago so I may have the details wrong.
echelon•4d ago
Reposting some links from a recent Jurassic Park thread -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4kBRC2co7Y&t=65s (Jurassic Park)
The LED panel is gorgeous:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Ko4qBkEcBM (render)
A lot of people have replicated or restored these:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qm6w57ZcJZQ
https://www.housedillon.com/posts/resurrected-led-panels/
tvarghese7•4d ago
The Cray fluorinert fountains were way cooler :)
echelon•4d ago
rahen•4d ago
It's also the computer that powered the Chevrolet Navlab self-driving car in 1986.
Lerc•4d ago
Excluding the bug side of things. If they did everything they were supposed to how hard was it to get them to perform a task that distributed the work through the machine.
I read some stuff on, I forget, maybe *lisp? I found it rather impenetrable.
On top of this, have there been any advances pin software development in the subsequent years that would have been a good fit for the architecture.
I always thought it was an under explored idea, having to compete with architectures that were supported by a sotware environment that had much longer to develop.
leephillips•3d ago
If the problem was very data-parallel, one could get nearly perfect linear speedups.