The David Sarnoff Research Center has also developed the world’s firstvideo supercomputer, and says it is now being used by Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc to design future RCA television receivers and by the Center to develop high-definition televisions for the US effort. Called the Princeton Engine, it was created to speed the development of advanctelevsion systems and TV receiver features. The Princeton Engine is described as the first of a new class of supercomputer that provide engineers and scientists with real-time video simulation to develop and prototype electronic systems at a much faster rate by decreasing or eliminating the need for expensive hand-made prototypes. The massively parallel machine has 1,024 processors and implements a multiple-data architecture. Every aspect of the Princeton Engine from its architecture to the high-speed microprocessors and supporting circuitry, was designed by a Sarnoff team over the past four years. It enables designers to program directly at the circuit block-diagram level, with real-time processing of video sequences; key benefits for video over other massively parallel machines are claimed to be input-output bandwidth, support for a high-level graphical programming environment, and the degree of real-time user interaction. Sarnoff sees it being used in teleconferencing, sonar, radar, weather forecasting, photo analysis, command and control, and environmental modelling but gave no indication of who would sell it.
