Adrian Cochrane
I was going to discuss the Connection Machine tomorrow, but quick searches aren't turning up anything in-depth for me to summarise.
Here's a link though: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/vs-cm-1-2-5.html
If you have more info, I'll boost!
What I will say is that it sounds like it was essentially a modern GPU built from 1980s hardware.
Computers were nowhere near as powerful back then, CG for movies required supercomputers who's computational power was dwarfed by home computers by the 2000s.
Adrian Cochrane
This was requested by @lain_7
His description is better than anything I can write, with how little I know about this: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/vs-cm-1-2-5.html
Your friendly 'net denizen
@alcinnz Maybe you calready came across these things, but I'll post it just in case you hadn't.
There's the book from Hillis that you can borrow for a little bit (I have a physical copy of this):
https://archive.org/details/connectionmachin0000hill
https://archive.org/details/connectionmachin00hill
There's also this paper on the architecture:
Adrian Cochrane
@cstanhope Looking into them!
Your friendly 'net denizen
@alcinnz I just remembered this one:
https://paperswelove.org/2018/video/dan-bentley-connection-machine/
My notes say, "Fun, but almost glib, talk about the connection machine." So I can't remember how informative it is. But it does link to Hillis' thesis at MIT, which might provide additional information.
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/14719/18524280-MIT.pdf
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