mark.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay@sri-unix.UUCP (11/07/82)
From: Mark Weiser <mark.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay> Just to mention another project, The CS department at the University of Maryland has a parallel computing project called Zmob. A Zmob consists of 256 Z-80 processors called moblets, each with 64k memory, connected by a 48 bit wide high speed shift register ring network (100ns/shift, 25.6us/revolution) called the "conveyer belt". The conveyer belt acts almost like a 256x256 cross-bar since it rotates faster than a z-80 can do significant I/O, and it also provides for broadcast messages and messages sent and received by pattern match. Each Z-80 has serial and parallel ports, and the whole thing is served by a Vax which provides cross-compiling and file access. There are four projects funded and working on Zmob (other than the basic hardware construction), sponsored by the Air Force. One is parallel numerical analysis, matrix calculations, and the like (the Z-80's have hardware floating point). The second is parallel image processing and vision. The third is distributed problem solving using Prolog. The fourth (mine) is operating systems and software, developing remote-procedure-call and a distributed version of Unix called Mobix. A two-moblet prototype was working a year and half ago, and we hope to bring up a 128 processor version in the next few months. (The boards are all PC'ed and stuffed but timing problems on the bus are temporarily holding things back).