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U.S. Department of Energy
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The architecture and the related control problems of a transputer-based highly parallel database computer

Thesis/Dissertation ·
OSTI ID:5533808
The current trend of many computer applications is non-numerical processing, which occurs in information management and artificial intelligence. Database systems, as stand-alone information management systems or as the foundation for other higher level applications, play an extremely important role in the development of the computer field. This research is to develop an architecture for a highly parallel database machine based on hardware building blocks. The unique feature of the architecture is that there are about one thousand very powerful microprocessors and one thousand independent disk drives. The most important and difficult issue in such an architecture is the interprocessor communication network which links all the components together. The architecture developed as the foundation of the database machine is called CONNECT. CONNECT is a highly parallel MIMD system with distributed memories. Although it can be extended to other hardware bases, the design of CONNECT is mainly based on transputers which represents the state of the art of parallel processing techniques and an interesting and promising trend in parallel architecture. The heart of the architecture CONNECT is the interprocessor communication network which is a hybrid packet-switching network and circuit-switching network. The combined network inherits the advantages of both kinds of network while avoiding their limitations. It provides fast and stable channels for short, mainly control messages and high bandwidth for large data sets. This is vital to a parallel database system. The circuit-switching network itself is controlled by a network of control processors, thus providing parallel control inside a parallel system.
Research Organization:
Florida International Univ., Miami, FL (United States)
OSTI ID:
5533808
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English