Sequoia: A fault-tolerant tightly coupled multiprocessor for transaction processing

Journal Article · Mon Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 1988 · Computer; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/2.17· OSTI ID:6988454

Bernstein, P A

The Sequoia computer is a tightly coupled multiprocessor, and thus attains the performance advantages of this style of architecture. It avoids most of the fault-tolerance disadvantages of tight coupling by using a new fault-tolerance design. The Sequoia architecture is similar to other multimicroprocessor architectures, such as those of Encore and Sequent, in that it gives dozens of microprocessors shared access to a large main memory. It resembles the Stratus architecture in its extensive use of hardware fault-detection techniques. It resembles Stratus and Auragen in its ability to quickly recover all processes after a single point failure, transparently to the user. However, Sequoia is unique in its combination of a large-scale tightly coupled architecture with a hardware approach to fault tolerance. This article gives an overview of how the hardware architecture and operating systems (OS) work together to provide a high degree of fault tolerance with good system performance.

• Research Organization: Sequoia Systems (US)
• OSTI ID: 6988454
• Journal Information: Computer; (United States), Journal Name: Computer; (United States) Vol. 21:2; ISSN CPTRB
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990210* -- Supercomputers-- (1987-1989)
ARRAY PROCESSORS
COMPUTER CODES
COMPUTERS
DATA PROCESSING
DIGITAL COMPUTERS
EQUIPMENT INTERFACES
EXECUTIVE CODES
FAULT TOLERANT COMPUTERS
MEMORY DEVICES
PROCESSING