The Connection Machine (Mit Press Series in Artificial Intelligence)

Describes a new kind of computer which involves parallel processing and hundreds of small microprocessors with individually integrated memories, and discusses the LISP programming language, data structures, and storage allocation

This book is essentially an edited version of Hillis's landmark thesis describing the design and implementation of the Connection Machine (CM), a massively parallel computer. The philosophy behind the CM's design is that the right kind of machine for many important computational tasks is a machine with vast numbers of simple processors doing the same thing on different data. This notion of one processor per important data element (one processor per pixel in image processing) is inspiring.

The Connection Machine is not a textbook and may be intimidating to beginners, but it provides a wonderful picture of the kinds of issues involved in designing a new machine. The book is well written and features a host of interesting discussions by Hillis on related topics (such as general philosophy of parallel computing). Anyone interested in the subject of computer architecture will enjoy and profit greatly from this book.