Convex Computer
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Convex Computer was a company that produced a number of vector minisupercomputers, supercomputers for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Their later Exemplar series of parallel computing machines were based on the Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC CPU series, and in 1995, HP bought the company. Exemplar machines were offered for sale by HP for some time, and Exemplar technology was used in HP's V-Class machines.
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History
Convex was formed in 1982 by Bob Paluck and Steve Wallach in Richardson, Texas. It was originally named Parsec. They planned on producing a machine very similar in architecture to the Cray Research vector processor machines, with a somewhat lower performance, but with a much better price/performance ratio. In order to lower costs, the Convex designs were not as technologically aggressive as Cray's, and were based on more mainstream chip technology, attempting to make up for the loss in performance in other ways.
Their first machine was the C1, released in 1985. The C1 was very similar to the Cray-1 in general design, but used a slower memory and main CPU. They offset this by increasing the capabilities of the vector units, including 128 64-bit registers, double that of the Cray. It also used virtual memory as opposed to the statically paged memory system of the Cray machines, which improved programming. It was based on CMOS chips, and generally rated at 20 MFLOP/s peak for double precision (64 bits), and 40 MFLOP/s peak for single precision (32 bits), about 1/5th the normal speed of the Cray-1. They also invested heavily in advanced automatic vectorizing compilers in order to gain performance when existing programs were ported to their systems. The machines ran a BSD version of Unix known as ConvexOS.
The C2 was a crossbar-interconnected multiprocessor version of the C1, with up to 4 CPUs, released in 1988. It used newer ECL chips for a boost in clock speed from 10 MHz to 25 MHz, and rated at 50 MFLOPS peak for double precision per CPU (100 MFLOPS peak for single precision). It was Convex's most successful product.
The C2 was followed by the C3 in 1991, being essentially similar to the C2 but with a faster clock and support for up to 8 CPUs. Various configurations of the C3 were offered, with between 50 to 240 MFLOPS per CPU. However, the C3 was delivered late, and by the time it was released, it had lost most of its edge over the competition.
Another speed boost was planned in the C4, which moved the hardware implementation to GaAs-based chips, following an evolution identical to that of the Cray machines, but the effort was too little, too late. By this time, Convex was losing money.
In 1994, Convex introduced an entirely new design, known as the Exemplar. Unlike the C-series vector computer, the Exemplar was a parallel-computing machine based on off-the-shelf HP-PA RISC chips, connected together using SCI. First dubbed MPP, these machines were later called SPP and Exemplar. By this time, Convex established a working partnership with HP's hardware and software divisions.
In 1995, Hewlett-Packard bought Convex. HP sold Convex Exemplar machines under the S-Class and X-Class titles, and later incorporated some of Exemplar's technology into the V-Class machine.
Culture
According to most former employees, Convex was a very fun place to work at. For some time, there were beer parties every Friday, and an annual Convex Beach Party. There was a fitness center and other recreational facilities on-site.
Convex had an unusually thorough interview process, which, for technical positions, included a grilling by a group of engineers. This ensured only the best got to work there.
Convex lasted longer than most supercomputer companies, and to celebrate this, Convex had a graveyard of former supercomputer companies on its property.
Ex-employees of Convex jokingly refer to themselves as ex-cons. There is a mailing list (http://www.ex-convex.org) of Convex ex-employees, as well as frequent reunions.
Famous People at Convex
Some famous names in Computing worked at Convex.
- Tom Christiansen of Perl fame worked at Convex on a project called Convex Meta Series, which anticipated modern cluster computers.
- Robert Morris of Morris worm fame worked as a summer intern at Convex.
- Dan Connolly of HTML and W3C fame worked at Convex on the documentation tools team.
- Mark Lutz author of several Python programming language books worked at Convex.
External links
- Convex ex-employees website (http://www.ex-convex.org/)
- Long Live Convex (http://www.tejasconsulting.com/newsletter/2003April-May.html#feature)