fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu (Steve Stevenson-Moderator) (11/30/89)
[ This was passed on to me by Bob Panoff. It was distributed at NRL. - Steve ] Washington, Nov. 28, 1989 -- Thinking Machines Corporation announced today the receipt of a $12 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to accelerate its development of the world's most powerful supercomputer, with peak speeds above one trillion operations per second (1 TeraOps). Under the terms of the contract, Thinking Machines will produce a supercomputer 1,000 times more powerful than today's supercomputers. "Our customers have told us that they need this level of performance," explained Danny Hillis, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Thinking Machines. "And we feel we're in the best position to provide it." A September 8, 1989 report from the Executive Office of Science and Technology Policy stated that, "High performance computing is a vital and strategic technology, exerting strong leverage on the rest of the computer industry and other cutting-edge areas.... We cannot afford to cede our historical leadership in high performance computing and its applications." The report detailed target applications for this new level of supercomputing, including world climate prediction, semiconductor circuit design and test, superconductivity research, and mapping the human genome to support advanced drug design (see attached chart). The project, code-named MEGA, builds on the proven massively parallel architecture of the company's Connection Machine supercomputer, currently installed at more than 40 scientific, industrial and commercial sites throughout the world. Installations include Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA Ames Research Center, Dow Jones Information Services, United Technologies and Lockheed Aerospace. Chart inserted here. Title: Some Grand Challenges and Their Projected Computational Requirements. Source: Office of Science and Technology Policy. Chart shows that applications such as Vision, Climate Modeling, Fluid Turbulence, Human Genome, Vehicle Dynamics, Ocean Circulation, Viscous Fluid Dynamics, Semiconductor Modeling, Superconductor Modeling, and Quantum Chromodynamics require 10 Gwords of Memory Size and 1 Tflops of Processing Speed. Thinking Machines Corporation was formed to apply parallel processing techniques to the growing number of data-intensive computing applications in business and science. Since announcing the Connection Machine system in 1986, the company has grown to become the second largest supercomputer supplier in the U.S., with 10 percent of the world's installed base. Thinking Machines is headquartered at 245 First Street, Cambridge, Mass. For further information, contact: Alison Holland, Thinking Machines Corporation, (617) 876-1111 or Maura FitzGerald/Susan Curtin, Miller Communications, (617) 536-0470 Connection Machine is a registered trademark of Thinking Machines Corporation.