Connection Machine 2 (capitol):
1988–1993
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In 1988, NCAR joined with the University of Colorado to form the Center for Applied Parallel Processing (CAPP). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) and several private companies also became CAPP affiliates.
CAPP's aim was to develop an infrastructure for the support of parallel computation — for example, tools for problem decomposition and expression, parallel algorithms, and high-performance networking and graphics.
SCD became the operational facility for CAPP, and under its auspices, an 8,192-processor Connection Machine system (model CM-2) was delivered to NCAR in August 1988. The CM-2, named "capitol," was an 8,192-proceessor computer manufactured by Thinking Machines Corporation.
The CM-2 performed thousands of computations simultaneously (in parallel) and was extensively used by researchers working on massively parallel processing at NCAR and NOAA, as well as by the university community.
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SCD set up a parallel geodynamics project designed to provide information on the suitability of the CM-2's single-instruction multiple data stream (SIMD) architecture for modeling atmospheric science problems.
The CM-2 was replaced in 1993 by the CM-5.