Parts/Interconnect/Thinking Machines CM-5 fat tree
Interconnect · Connection Machine · 1993
Thinking Machines CM-5 fat tree
The fat-tree data network of the CM-5.
Why this part
Charles Leiserson's fat tree, and one of the few network topologies to come out of academic theory and go straight into a product. The idea is that bandwidth should widen as you climb toward the root, because traffic aggregates there, so a tree stops being a bottleneck. Every InfiniBand cluster built since is a fat tree, usually without anyone saying so. The CM-5 also ran a separate control network alongside the data network purely for synchronisation, which is a luxury nobody has repeated.
Systems using this part
- Systems
- 1
- Rmax underneath
- 59.7 GFlop/s
- Units recorded
- -
| System | Role | Country | Units | System Rmax | Supplied by | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CM-5/1024 1993-06 | Interconnect | USA | - | 59.7 GFlop/s | Thinking Machines | #1 → |
“Units recorded” sums only the edges where a public source states a quantity. It is a floor, not a total, and should never be read as installed base.