历史与人物inc.com编辑精选
Thinking Machines 的兴衰
The Rise and Fall of Thinking Machines (1995)
2013 — 2018，它一次次回到首页
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导读
1995 年《Inc.》杂志的长文，讲述超级计算机公司 Thinking Machines 的兴衰：Danny Hillis 创办的这家公司凭借 CM-1/CM-2/CM-5 连接机在并行计算上做出开创性工作，却因管理不善、定位摇摆等原因走向失败。文章把技术天才的成就放进商业失败的框架里审视，侧重公司经营而非技术细节。
为什么经久不衰：它是并行计算从实验室走向 GPU 时代的早期一章，既讲一段被商业化埋葬的技术远见，也是关于研究型公司如何做不成生意的经典案例。
HN 评论精选
技术遗产远比商业失败重要：CM 的并行编程思想直接通向今天的 CUDA/GPU 算法。
这篇文章很老，只触及 Hillis 天才的皮毛，还把它框成商业失败案例。这里有个讲 CM-5 架构的好视频，注意其编程概念在抽象层面和 CUDA 多么相似。Hillis 80 年代的 MIT 论文以《The Connection Machine》成书出版，写得极好、引人入胜，今天用来理解 GPU 编程依然贴切，讲的是算法、图、map/reduce 以及在 Thinking Machines 开创的并行技术。比如 Guy Blelloch 在那里开创了 prefix scan，如今是 GPU 常用技术。HN 上最近很多关于 APL 的讨论，Hillis 的 *Lisp 想法也来自并行化数组处理原语，而这些源自 APL，他在描述该语言的论文中也承认了。旧的东西又新了一遍。
politips查看英文原文
Yes this article is very old, and really only scratches the surface of Hillis' genius and puts a business failure angle on it. Here's a great video describing the architecture of the CM-5 https://youtu.be/Ua-swPZTeX4 Note how similar the programming concepts are to CUDA (at an abstract level). Hillis also in the 80s published his MIT thesis as a book: The Connection Machine https://www.amazon.com/Connection-Machine-Press-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0262081571/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525195204&sr=8-1&keywords=the+connection+machine An incredibly well written and fascinating read, just as relevant today for programming a GPU as it was for programming the ancient beast of a CM-2. It's about algorithms, graphs, map/reduce, and other techniques of parallelism pioneered at Thinking Machines. For example, Guy Blelloch worked at TM, and pioneered prefix scans on these machines, now common techniques used on GPUs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5sM-4ODXaA http://uenics.evansville.edu/~mr56/ece757/DataParallelAlgorithms.pdf There's also been a lot of hum lately on HN about APL, much of Hillis' *Lisp ideas come from parallelizing array processing primitives ("zectors" and "zappings"), ideas that originating in APL as he acknowledged in the paper describing the language: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.108.5413&rep=rep1&type=pdf What's old is new... again.
推荐同主题延伸阅读：Hillis 回忆费曼在连接机公司工作的文章。
你可能还会喜欢 Daniel Hillis 1989 年写的《Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine》。
msl查看英文原文
You might also like Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine [1] written in 1989 by Daniel Hillis. [1] http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/
公司管理层沉迷排场与琐事，这些荒诞细节是它失败的直接注脚。
这本来可以是 90 年代众多互联网泡沫公司之一，但这些细节依然惊人：坚持每间办公室刷成不同且指定的颜色；造出巨大开放空间以激发交流与创意；设配有主厨的豪华餐厅；办公室到处是沙发，研究员可以小睡甚至过夜，很多人真这么干；饮料机接到终端上，想喝什么敲进去就行；开古董消防车通勤；Handler 让人把新楼层每面墙刷成略不同的淡紫色，刷完不满意，又让研究员和科学家重刷一遍；中庭装了巨大大理石拱门；她花 4 万美元设计 CM-5 卫衣的 logo，然后否决了；公司下沉时，她还在忙着出一本收录公司那间声名狼藉的餐厅菜谱的食谱书。
damian2000查看英文原文
This could be any number of dot bombs from the late 90s, however its still incredible... - Insisted that each office be painted a different and specific color. - Huge open spaces were created to stimulate idea sharing and creativity. - A plush cafeteria was put in, complete with a gourmet chef. - Couches were scattered throughout the offices so that researchers could take naps or even sleep there overnight, which many of them did. - The soft-drink machine was wired to a terminal. Researchers who wanted a drink simply typed in their choice. - Commuting in an antique fire engine. - Handler had every surface on the new floor repainted a slightly different shade of mauve. When it was done, she wasn't satisfied. So she had her researchers and scientists paint it again. - An enormous marble archway installed in the atrium - She commissioned a $40,000 logo design for a CM-5 sweatshirt and then rejected it. - While the company was sinking, she focused her attention on putting out a cookbook with recipes from the company's now-infamous cafeteria.
失败不在于没有市场，而在于没能从研究项目转型为公司；同时指出 Sun 的对照案例。
这种铺张在 90 年代很常见。Thinking Machines 和 SGI 一样有盈利市场，但经营极差，无法从研究项目转型成公司。反观 Sun Microsystems 执行出色，却在十年后被高性能计算的商品化杀死。
jordanb查看英文原文
The ostentatious stuff was par for the course for the 90s. Thinking Machines, like SGI, had a profitable market but was horribly run and found it impossible to transition from a research project to a company. OTOH, Sun Microsystems executed brilliantly but was killed a decade later by the commoditization of HPC.
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