Thinking Machines Corporation (TMC)

The highly parallel nature of many scientific problems led to the design of several different types of computers with multiple processors (sometimes many thousands). One such design was the SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data—pronounced ‘Sim-dee’) machine.

Thinking Machines Corporation, founded in 1983, by Danny Hillis, attempted to market a SIMD machine (64,000 processors, but each could only deal with a single bit) called the Connection Machine (CM-1). First marketed in 1985, they sold 7 machines, mainly to research groups.

They later produced several larger machines with more powerful processors, and were actually profitable in 1989, but the competition was growing from more established supercomputer firms. TMC declared bankruptcy in 1993.