MasPar

MasPar was a massively parallel supercomputer manufacturer active in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The company's primary product was the MP-1 and later the MP-2 family of computers, which employed a SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) architecture to achieve high performance on data-parallel problems.

The MasPar architecture consisted of a large number of processing elements (PEs) arranged in a two-dimensional grid. These PEs were relatively simple processors, but they were connected by a high-bandwidth network that allowed for efficient communication between them. A separate front-end processor, typically a DEC VAX or Sun Microsystems workstation, provided the programming environment and managed the overall operation of the machine.

The key feature of the MasPar systems was their ability to execute a single instruction on a vast dataset simultaneously across all the processing elements. This made them well-suited for applications such as image processing, signal processing, computational fluid dynamics, and database searching.

MasPar competed with other massively parallel computer manufacturers such as Thinking Machines Corporation and Kendall Square Research. Despite its technological advancements, MasPar struggled to achieve widespread commercial success, and the company was eventually acquired by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1996. DEC was subsequently acquired by Compaq, which later merged with Hewlett-Packard. The MasPar architecture and its associated technologies are no longer actively developed or marketed. The legacy of MasPar remains as a significant chapter in the history of parallel computing.