The Design of the Connection Machine
Tamiko Thiel · Design Issues · 1994
Looking towards the twenty first century, scientists have made a list of Grand Challenges facing us today, tasks such as the mapping of genetic structures and the modeling of global climates. Whether of a macroscopic or microscopic scale, what these problems have in common is that, until recently, they were considered too complex to analyze. The revolutionary new research tools that make it possible to investigate these problems are the parallel supercomputers-machines with tens to thousands of multiple processors capable of performing simultaneously calculations that earlier supercomputers had to perform in sequence, one after the other. One of the leading producers of parallel supercomputers is Thinking Machines Corporation. I was in charge of the mechanical and industrial design group that produced the package used for their first two supercomputers, the Connection Machine CM-1 and the subsequent enhanced version, the CM-2. Our desire to find a for the machine that expressed its significance in the development of computer technology led us to re-examine the basic tenets of twentieth century design philosophy. The basis of this philosophy for almost a century, at least for design theorists, has been form follows function. While both ordinary consumers, as well as acclaimed designers, have staged revolts against the asceticism this dictum seems to prescribe, no one has questioned the soundness of this rule that shall admit of no exceptions.' We, too, took it as the basis for our design exploration, but quickly found that the standard interpretation of this dictum-whereby is reduced to the utilitarian minimum necessary to fulfill structural and functional requirements-was inadequate to our purposes. This interpretation, appropriate to artifacts of the late-nineteenth century Machine Age, turned out to be inapplicable to the symbolic and abstract machines of our late twentieth century Information Age. We therefore began a search for a new paradigm for modern design, one that used to express the functions of machines that manipulate signs and numbers, rather than physical objects. A second component of this paradigm, however, had to 1 Carl W. Condit, The Chicago School