Sun Microsystems Inc will use technologies from failing massively parallel systems pioneer Thinking Machines Corp to enhance its current line of Sparc-based servers and system software, to add further iterations, and to deliver a full-featured parallel architecture, today’s issue of our sister paper Unigram.X reports. Sun has already hired key staff from the Cambridge, Massachusetts company for its recently created Parallel Open Systems Group. It remains tight-lipped on when or if it will conclude a widely-predicted licensing deal with Thinking Machines, saying there are other kinds of discussions going on. Thinking Machines was up to its fifth generation of Single Instruction Multiple Data architecture with the 128-way, 40MHz SuperSparc-based CM-5E when it filed Chapter 11 papers in August. Thinking Machines, with machines at some 100 sites, claims the way its vector processors handle parallel input-output alongside parallel time-sharing is unique. As well as CM-5E, Thinking Machines had a future parallel system and software under development, other software tools and the Darwin data mining application, which searches through mounds of data for underlying relationships. As well as extending its symmetric multiprocessing capabilities in new machines or in new iterations of its current symmetric multiprocessing lines with Thinking Machines techniques, Sun will enhance parallel support in Solaris, and develop coupling and additional clustering and networking. Extending its high end will run Sun up against the likes of Cray Research Inc whose Superservers currently sit above Sun’s SparcCenter 2000s, although Sun claims the strategies will be complementary. Sun, a massively parallel systems rookie, will find itself in an already overcrowded ballpark, although commercial parallel offerings should enable it to compete more aggressively at the high end with the likes of AT&T Global Information Solutions, IBM Corp and Pyramid Technology Corp. With little or no experience of parallel hardware or compiler techniques and what some argue is a retarded chip set, it’s unclear what Sun can bring to the party, except perhaps its deep pockets. IBM, Cray and other parallel houses have all passed on overtures from Thinking Machines, apparently concluding that what it can offer is already de facto and that the asking price was too high.
