This is photo of the Thinking Machines Corporation CM-5 massively parallel supercomputer from the cover of its official sales brochure. The CM-5 supercomputer was originally announced in 1991, and had up to 1,056 SPARC RISC processors linked together with a Fat Tree interconnection network using a multiple instruction, multiple data (MIMD) architecture. A CM-5 held the distinction of being the world's fastest supercomputer in 1993. Likely the most prominent customer of the CM-5 was the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which used them for cryptanalysis. In popular culture, a CM-5 supercomputer was shown in the control room in the 1994 blockbuster film Jurassic Park.

My current avatar image is the glowing front panel of a Thinking Machines CM-5, so it only made sense to make my profile photo one as well! ;) As far as I'm concerned, these are the coolest computers ever built!