A difficulty with parallel processing, though, is that writing its software is more art than science, an art practiced well by a relatively small number of programmers. Torrent Systems, founded as a two-person company in 1993, had an idea for solving this problem but was unable to find venture capital to finance the research to develop the technology. The company then sought and won ATP funding that enabled it to proceed. Torrent ultimately developed a component software system that allows programmers to build parallel-processing software systems without needing to explicitly understand how the system exploits the underlying parallel-processing hardware. To accomplish this project, researchers studied the actual application needs of typical users - to assure that the results would be widely applicable and useful.

Quick to Market

Torrent produced a research prototype of a parallel-software component framework, created its basic components and performed limited testing on them. It also planned to develop a library of reusable code containing components for a parallel-processing system. If such a library were available for other developers, then even more applications could come on line sooner. However, the company did not complete this research task. Torrent closed the project before its anticipated completion date in order to commercialize early technical results and generate needed revenue.

Torrent incorporated the ATP-funded component-based technology in a product called Orchestrate^TM, which the company describes as a "parallel application environment that insulates you from the complexities of parallel programming while delivering scalable applications." United Airlines and Citicorp were two of the first corporations to license it.

Strategic Marketing Alliances

The company has been quick to form strategic marketing alliances. It formed a partnership with IBM in July 1997, under which IBM will promote Orchestrate(tm) as a standard computer application. IBM's focus is rapid development and deployment of a parallel-processing hardware/software system that can be enlarged without needing to be replaced by a new version, because expansion is built into its architecture. Orchestrate^TM plays a key role in that expansion capability. The IBM system is specifically designed to make full use of customer sales and other data across an entire company, regardless of the type of business. Torrent extended that partnership a few months later, with IBM agreeing to resell Orchestrate^TM.

United Airlines, an early customer, reported in a November 1997 Chicago Tribune article that it had installed a new IBM RS6000/SP2 parallel-processing computer. The software supplied by IBM included Orchestrate^TM under a licensing agreement between Torrent and IBM. United paid $3.5 million for the hardware and planned to spend another $13.5 million to get the computer running. The system is expected to generate between $50 million and $100 million per year in increased revenue by doing a better job of matching potential fliers with available airplane seats. Orchestrate^TM is a critical component that enables United personnel to program the computer, which United would not otherwise have bought. This advance is important, since the RS6000/SP2 has been on the market for several years.

Torrent also formed a marketing partnership with Sun Microsystems in 1997. An early outgrowth of this alliance was a joint demonstration showing the advantages of using Orchestrate^TM in a typical data warehousing application. Orchestrate^TM was used to integrate the basic Torrent components and specialized components from three other vendors into a single test application. The test involved data cleaning of a name-and-address file of about 13 million records, which was then merged with a demographics file of about 16 million records. When the test was run without using parallel processing, the application took 32.5 hours on a machine using four processors. With Orchestrate(tm), the application took only 9 hours. When the number of processors was increased to 12, the Orchestrate^TM-based application finished in just 3 hours.

Torrent also entered partnerships in September 1997 with three new software vendors: The MEDSTAT Group, i.d.Centric and Knowledge Discovery One. And it negotiated bundling arrangements (selling two or more separately produced products as a unit) with independent software vendors and manufacturers including Emergent, Knowledge Discovery One, Lockheed Martin IS&T and MRJ Technology Solutions.

Potential for Huge Benefits

Torrent has succeeded in marketing its technology, and substantial broad-based benefits can be expected to flow from the use of the new technology incorporated in its software. Users of Orchestrate^TM have benefited from the removal of the need to pay attention to programming details for C/C++ (the most common language used to write programs for parallel processing), because Orchestrate(tm) handles them. As more applications of the new technology are implemented through the use of Orchestrate^TM and other Torrent products, more analyses of large databases will be done. Another product that uses the ATP-funded technology is Orchestrator for the SAS System^TM, recently released by the SAS Institute.

Economic benefits are likely to be large and widespread for this technology. It is embodied in "industrial strength" computer programs used in diverse industries and by government agencies. Users in these areas say they anticipate dramatic savings. Consumers will also benefit from these savings, as lower operating costs are passed on to them. Torrent, a small company, will be able to collect only a small percentage of the total additional value created by its technology, while the rest will spill over to others in the economy.

The benefits from the ATP project would likely be even greater if Torrent had been able to fully develop and make available the library of reusable components as originally planned. However, as is often the case with small, near-startup companies, cash-flow concerns related to ensuring company survival dictated a fast move to generate revenue. In this case, given its limited resources, Torrent felt it had to stop the research project early and commercialize the technology. As customers suggest needs for other components, they will be developed and integrated into the company's products.

ATP Project Speeds Exploitation of Parallel Processing

ATP funding for this project allowed Torrent to research and develop a prototype of a component software system that allows programmers to create parallel-processing software in a user-friendly way. Without the ATP funds, Torrent officials say, it is doubtful that the technology could have been successfully developed at all. Venture capital funding had been sought but was unavailable. ATP funded the project to enable U.S. industry to broadly and rapidly exploit parallel processing, expecting that it would generate significant benefits throughout the economy. The speedy adoption of Torrent's first commercial products confirms that expectation.

Go to other sections of Chapter 7: INFORMATION, COMPUTERS, AND COMMUNICATIONS
	Computer Recognition of Natural Handwriting
	Chinese Character-Recognition Methods for Computer Data Entry
	Three-Dimensional Anatomy of Human Body, With Animation, for Medical Training
	Packing More Data Into Optical Data-Storage Disks
	Mathematical Technology to Restore or Enhance Movies
	A User-Friendly Programmer's Tool for Writing Parallel-Processing Software