Multiflow

Multiflow Computer, Inc., founded in April, 1984 near New Haven, Connecticut, USA, was a manufacturer and seller of minisupercomputer hardware and software embodying the VLIW design style. Multiflow, incorporated in Delaware, ended operations in March, 1990, after selling about 125 VLIW minisupercomputers in the United States, Europe, and Japan. While Multiflow's commercial success was small and short-lived, its technical success and the dissemination of its technology and people had a great effect on the future of computer science and the computer industry. Multiflow's computers were arguably the most novel ever to be broadly sold, programmed, and used like conventional computers. (Other novel computers either required novel programming, or represented more incremental steps beyond existing computers.) Along with Cydrome, an attached-VLIW minisupercomputer company that had less commercial success, Multiflow demonstrated that the VLIW design style was practical, a conclusion surprising to many. While still controversial, VLIW has since been a force in high-performance embedded systems, and has been finding slow acceptance in general-purpose computing.