Was at Multiflow (Yale spinoff with Josh Fisher and John O'Donnell) '85-90 and saw the VLIW problem up close (was in the OS group, eventually running it).
The main problem was compiler complexity -- the hoped-for "junk parallelism" gains really never panned out (maybe 2-3X?), so the compiler was best when it could discover, or be fed, vector operations.
But Convex (main competitor at the time) already had the "minisupercomputer vector" market locked up.
So Multiflow folded in early '90 (I had already bailed, seeing the handwriting mural) after burning through $60M in VC, which was a record at the time, I believe.
The main problem was compiler complexity -- the hoped-for "junk parallelism" gains really never panned out (maybe 2-3X?), so the compiler was best when it could discover, or be fed, vector operations.
But Convex (main competitor at the time) already had the "minisupercomputer vector" market locked up.
So Multiflow folded in early '90 (I had already bailed, seeing the handwriting mural) after burning through $60M in VC, which was a record at the time, I believe.