Supercomputing with VLSI

Thesis/Dissertation · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1989

OSTI ID:5922874

Manohar, S

Supercoprocessors (SCPs), highly parallel VLSI architectures tuned to solving a specific problem class, are shown to provide a means of cost-effective supercomputing. A methodology for building SCPs for different computation-intensive problems is described: two pragmatic constraints namely problem-size-independence and limited-bandwidth constraint are imposed on special-purposes architectures; a simple but powerful model of computation is used to derive general upper bounds on the speedup obtainable using such architectures. It is shown that bounds established by other authors for matrix multiplication and sorting, using problem-specific approaches, can be derived very simply using this model. Poisson Engine-I (PE-I), a prototype SCP, is a system for solving the Laplace equation using the finite difference approximation. PE-I uses a novel approach: asynchronous iteration methods are implemented using a fixed-size, synchronous array of simple processing elements. Architectural and algorithmic extensions to PE-I are briefly considered: the solution of a wider class of PDEs and the use of more sophisticated algorithms like the multigrid method are some of the issues addressed. The SCP methodology is applied to the problems of matrix-multiplication and sorting. For sorting, an SCP with superlinear speedup is outlined. For the matrix problem, the architecture and implementation details of SMP are described in detail. SMP, realized with about fifty chips using current technology, is capable of through-puts greater than 150 Mflops, and is also unique in being optimal with respect to the lowerbound derived using the SCP model. The use of a collection of sup SCPs is advanced as a cost-effective supercomputing alternative.

• Research Organization: Brown Univ., Providence, RI (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5922874
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
ALGORITHMS
ARRAY PROCESSORS
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
COMPUTERS
COST
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
DIGITAL COMPUTERS
ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS
EQUATIONS
FINITE DIFFERENCE METHOD
INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
ITERATIVE METHODS
LAPLACE EQUATION
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
MATRICES
MICROELECTRONIC CIRCUITS
NUMERICAL SOLUTION
PARALLEL PROCESSING
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
PROGRAMMING
SORTING
SUPERCOMPUTERS
USES