Parallel designs are making inroads

Journal Article · Mon Mar 10 04:00:00 EST 1986 · Electronics; (United States)

OSTI ID:5850869

Manuel, T

There's a revolution brewing in supercomputers, pitting the classical von Neumann architecture against parallel configurations. Parallelism is making inroads in all sizes of computers, but the greater throughput it promises is especially critical in supercomputing. The main thrust in supercomputer architecture to date has been to build the fastest possible vector processor for single- or dual-processor supercomputers. The dual-processor models often team a superfast vector processor with a general-purpose scalar processor. Although many configurations may have only one vector processor, that processor is often highly pipelined for concurrent vector processing. But now there is a clear trend toward multiple-pipeline vector processors and even multiple vector processors in order to boost throughput even higher. For example, Cray is delivering four-processor machines-both X-MP/48 and Cray-2 models-and Alliant is delivering its FX/8 supercomputer with up to eight vector processors.

• OSTI ID: 5850869
• Journal Information: Electronics; (United States), Journal Name: Electronics; (United States) Vol. 59:10; ISSN ELECA
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
ARCHITECTURE
COMPUTERS
CRAY COMPUTERS
DATA-FLOW PROCESSING
DESIGN
DIGITAL COMPUTERS
PARALLEL PROCESSING
PROGRAMMING
SUPERCOMPUTERS
VECTOR PROCESSING