This is a great article, but episode 1 of the Ardent story is a bit scary. How does a startup team go from making a hypertext like software application to supercomputers which require:
"We had to write our parallelizing and vectorizing compilers and build our own high-end graphics boards, and write our own 3d graphics subroutine language – and put in all in a box that could fit in an office. Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.)"
Apparently they did ship (some product(s)) based on their wikipedia article, which is impressive given the odds stacked against them.
"We had to write our parallelizing and vectorizing compilers and build our own high-end graphics boards, and write our own 3d graphics subroutine language – and put in all in a box that could fit in an office. Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.)"
Apparently they did ship (some product(s)) based on their wikipedia article, which is impressive given the odds stacked against them.