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Computers have been with us for past 70 years. The way we use computers have evolved from when it was invented in the 50s to the present. In fact, the expectation from computers is accelerating with the age of internet. But, our underlying software foundations and its mathematics are still based in the 1950s when computers were locked up in huge data centers. This basic assumption has changed. Now the applications don't reside in one computers but across many computers. But our languages and computer architecture is still mired in the 1950s conceptualizations.

The expectation, in the new networked era is that software systems developed will work seamlessly, securely with privacy even though the application works on a network of computers. These new demands will not adequately be furnished by the current software languages and machine architectures.

This calls for new machine architectures and software languages and implementations. Connection Machine is the offering from MasterKube, to build this new private, hyper-connected and secure informatics world. The purpose of this page is to give the What, why, how, and where of MasterKube connection Machine.

What is MasterKube Connection Machine?

An Enterprise, economy or for that matter our human body/society is a society of independently operating entities that collaborate for a common goal. The order in which they communicate with each other is the process. For e.g.: smart factory, is an internet of manufacturing cells, interacting with each other to form a process that makes products.
The connection machine is a device that operates at business level, which can be programmed to connect different parties of your Internet of Everything or Internet of Things solution. Unlike the present-day IT, which operates on data, the connection machine connects these independently operating entities like customers, employees, present day siloed information systems, devices, factories, supply network into a collaborating Internet. How these autonomous agents that makes up this collaborating internet work together, is governed by Connection Machine Programming Language (CMPL).
The Connection machine is available on your premises hardware, as a service and as an appliance in future. The only requirements that is expected from infrastructure besides hardware are

• JVM,
• Linux operating system,
• MySQL server and
• TOMCAT server.

An appliance-based approach is planned in the future as the current Connection Machine implementations are simulated on sequential machine. This does not give the full power of the connection machine; a radical hardware redesign would significantly increase thruput.

What is so special about Connection Machine?

Unlike the traditional computer, MasterKube Connection Machine is built to serve the networked world. Also this means that what is important here is not computation but how these different components of the network work together to model our information systems. Given this, the Connection machine approach is radically different. This section gives what those differences are at a high level.

No program_counter

All traditional processor even the one offered by cloud providers work on traditional processors (like intel, AMD, ARM, etc). Application Programs are compiled into binaries which are then executed over the processor. All application programs that a programmer create, proceed one step at a time. I.e in a sequential manner. It is the processor that controls when the next instruction is ready to execute. All the programmer does is to sequence these instructions in order. This sequencing is accomplished by a program counter in the processor. It is the heart of the processor. This works with no interaction with the outside world.

As mentioned earlier, the applications in the present world sit across many devices on a network. The application is a process of these networked independently operating entities (Agents in connection machine parlance) working together in a process. The process, in this networked case, advance when process components that interact/communicate with each other. This absence of program counter in the Connection Machine makes it an ideal machine to do model processes in a networked world.

Absence of program counter makes the systems built on Connection machine very secure, concurrent and agile.

No Database

In all traditional systems all data is stored in a data base and is queried by the application program using a standard Database Management Query Language like SQL, GQL, GSQL etc. Web services, are generated by application programs that read from these databases.

Whereas with Connection machine, the observer sees no database. All state is exposed as hypertext. Rather than the current practice of row and columns, the whole state in connection machine is connected hypertext. Connection Machine is the only system, that delivers state as HATEOAS and hence it makes it very easy to build hyperconnected network and digital applications. A systems expressed as Hypertext make it very easy to represent complex relationships like one-to-many, many-to-many, etc. Unlike traditional database systems the data relationships are more flexible with Connection Machine.

The Connection Machine Programming Language is used to build the different agents/nodes and how they interact/connect with each other.

Offers Security by Design

Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability in applications is now expected to be available by design. All computer systems and programming languages are expected to offer security features by design. But most of the existing machines and languages provide any features to make this possible.

Connection Machine is built with a premise that security is a fundamental part of the core machine. The CMPL provides way to hide information and also to share it confidentially. Because of the unique interaction-based technology of Connection machine, Confidentiality, Integrity and availability is provided by design at the network level.

Hypertext nature of the data, offers better security, as it can be provided at the network level. The use of HTTP makes it easy to incorporate security using existing content firewall technologies already available in client premises.

Offers Privacy by Design

Privacy is a new feature that is expected out of all information technology systems. It is now mandated by law in Europe, Singapore, India etc. The privacy component is made up of Information unlinkability, Information Transparency and Information intervenability.

The current IT infrastructure and application programming languages do not provide much support for these privacy features. The unique connection-based machine and the Connection Machine programing language provides features, which reduces effort to bring in Privacy features to your information systems.

Open by Design

The world is moving away from proprietary architectures to a open and Interoperable world. The openness is characterized by the ease with which other information systems or devices can connect. The execution engine should also be able to be free to be moved across IT infrastructure.

Traditional IT due to the algorithmic nature of the systems and the processor centric nature of execution, have encouraged proprietary technologies leading Vendor lock in. This has led reduction in agility of organizations in the fast paced world.

To prevent this vendor lock in and increasingly arthritic nature of present day IT systems, Connection Machine has by design avoided Algorithms to define this alternate machine architecture. Instead of algorithms, connection machine adopts Interaction as its foundational thinking. Interactions by the very nature assumes that the world around us are built of disparate systems and what is important is to define such systems as independently operating entities that connect with each other.

In the world of Internet of Things and Internet of Everything, what is important is how easy it is to for devices, information systems, etc. to connect to create this secure cyberworld. To take an analogy, like our electric outlet which makes it easy to connect the connection machine would let you business internet into which your stakeholders can connect.