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It couldn’t keep pace with a Cray for any tasks that weren’t optimized for its architecture. If your problem fit the SIMD model like the genetic algorithms I was implementing at the time it was just amazing.

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Yeah, ours was a fluid dynamics problem that needed information from neighboring cells. So at some point there needed to be data moving between cells and that really killed performance. There was also a global value that need to be computed at each iteration that controlled the simulation speed to ensure the step sizes were not too big.

Also the file I/O was horribly slow. We where scaling and dumping raw data to files so what we could do post processing to make movies of the simulations.

Plus, beyond the fascinating architecture, it was a beautiful machine. The Cray-1 and its successors may occupy more historical memory (see: Sneakers (1992)) but the CM-1, CM-2, and to a lesser degree (in my ever so humble opinion), the CM-5 blow Cray's most iconic machines out of the water on the sexiness axis.

Physical appearance or architecturally?

Sadly I never even saw the CM-2 I used. Just got in via telnet.

If you're in the American Southeast, the Computer Museum of America in Roswell, GA has one on display. I've visited and seen it, along with other supercomputers.

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