Machine type: Distributed-memory multi-vectorprocessor.
Models: Computing Surface 2.
Operating system: Internal OS transparent to the user, SunOS (Sun's Unix variant) on the front-end system.
Connection structure: Multistage crossbar.
Compilers: Extended Fortran 77, ANSI C.
Vendors information Web page: http://www.meiko.com.
System parameters:
Remarks:
The CS-2 features 8-1,024 processor elements (PEs) which can
be either scalar or vector nodes. Apart from a separate communications module,
these PEs contain either a SuperSparc or a SuperSparc + 2 VP
vectorprocessors. The speed of a scalar PE is estimated to be 40 Mflop/s (at a
20 ns clock) and 200 Mflop/s for the vector PEs for 64-bit precision. The
VP modules are manufactured by Fujitsu. The speed at 32-bit precision is
doubled with respect to 64-bit operation and, unlike the earlier Fujitsu VP
products, use IEEE 754 floating-point format. The memory has 16 banks and to avoid memory
bank conflicts the CS-2 has the interesting option to have scrambled allocation
of addresses, thus guaranteeing good access at potential problematic strides 2,
4, etc.
The point-to-point communication speed is 100 MB/s (50 MB/s in each direction). Because the communication happens through multi-level crossbars, called ``layers'' by Meiko, the aggregate bandwidth of the system scales with the number of PEs, with a very respectable latency of 200 ns per layer. As the maximum configuration of the machine contains 1,024 PEs, the theoretical peak performance at 64-bit precision is 200 Gflop/s. It is possible to connect each PE to its own I/O devices to have scalable parallel I/O with the scaling of other resources.
The Portland Group which has won some renown for its excellent i860 compilers
has developed the compilers for the CS-2. These include Fortran 77 and ANSI C
but also Fortran 90. The current compiler already offers data distribution
directives as proposed in [#HPFspec#
In the USA the machine will be marketed by Meiko, however, in Europe and the
rest of the world marketing is done by Parallel Computing Industries, a
consortium of Meiko, Parsys, and Telmat.
Measured Performances: In [#linpackbm#
Next: The nCUBE 3.
Up: Distributed-memory MIMD systems
Previous: The Matsushita ADENART.
Jack Dongarra
Sat Feb 10 15:12:38 EST 1996