Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: zippy@cs.brandeis.edu (Patrick Tufts)
Subject: Re: What caused TMC to file Chapter 11?
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 13:03:07 GMT
Message-ID: <3h34vu$ak7@news.cs.brandeis.edu>

burton@tera.com (Burton Smith) writes:
>In article <mvidalD2ypFp.Cu3@netcom.com> mvidal@netcom.com (mike vidal) writes:
>>the end of the cold war + the end of the "evil empire" 

>I disagree -- the government's need for HPC has increased, if anything.
>The CM-5 was far too hard to write programs for, so it didn't sell --
>even to the people who need that kind of performance most.

I find this to be an unlikely explanation.  

While the US government could certainly use the bigger crunch, and can
also certainly find people who can program them, it doesn't have the
will to spend money on high performance computing.  I'll leave it as
an excercise to the reader to figure out who the largest government
buyers in the 80s were, and where their budgets are now (hint: which
major US departments are facing the financial axe?).

>Sometimes a market shrinks because of inadequate supply rather than
>insufficient demand.

Which is not the case with parallel computing.

--Pat

>Burton



