Echoing Digital Equipment Corp’s tie-up in massively parallel processing with MasPar Computer Corp, IBM Corp has turned to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Thinking Machines Corp, agreeing a rather lower level alliance in which Thinking’s Connection Machines will be able to be interfaced to IBM mainframes; DEC already has a agreement with Thinking Machines to link their respective machines. IBM will also make available advanced technologies to Thinking Machines – access to its chip design and fabrication technologies and its disk drives according to the New York Times. The two will also collaborate on parallel software, and the agreement will give Thinking Machines improved credibility among large corporate customers that vote the IBM ticket. IBM insists that the agreement will have no effect on its continuing alliance with Steve Chen’s Supercomputing Solutions Inc in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Bankrolled by IBM, that company is in process of designing multiprocessor supercomputers intended to be several times more powerful than anything available now.
