Lisp Machines

Lisp Machines Inc. ( LMI short ) was a manufacturer of Lisp machines, a particular type of computer. The company LMI was founded in 1979 by Richard Greenblatt, in order to further develop and produce those Lisp machines, which he had already designed with other hackers at the MIT AI Lab.

The company became insolvent in 1986, was bought by a Canadian investor and LMI tried as GigaMos system a fresh start. Due to legal problems of the investor but GigaMos system came shortly after the foundation is also in bankruptcy.

History

1973 began Richard Greenblatt and Thomas Knight draft Lisp Machine. In 1976 she produced with the MIT CONS a first prototype. After the project was presented and received financial support from DARPA and other companies, it soon became clear that his own company had to be established for the development and production of the Lisp machines. However came to internal disputes over the planned business model. Greenblatt wanted to start a company, which corresponded to the hacker ethic of the MIT AI Lab and should do without venture capital. However, Russell Noftsker advocated a traditional company. Since Noftsker already had experience in the business world and it came to personal differences between Greenblatt and part of the staff of the AI Lab, managed Noftsker to attract many employees to his side. In 1979 he founded Symbolics Inc. Greenblatt founded later that year Lisp Machines Inc.

Lisp Machines of the LMI

  • LMI CADR - a repackaged MIT CADR.
  • LMI Lambda - licensed to Texas Instruments and sold as TI Explorer I.
  • LMI K- Machine - could not be published because LMI was previously in bankruptcy.

K- Machine

The K -machine was to design a completely new Lisp machine that is no longer based in contrast to the other machines on the MIT Lisp - origin design. The draft began in late 1985 and should be designed as a competitor to the Symbolics Ivory and the TI Explorer microchips. K -machine was designed a 32-bit architecture ( in contrast to the 36 bit architecture of the Symbolics machines) and, after RISC principles.

264484
de