davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (01/11/90)
I see that Intel has announced the IPSC-860, another mutliprocessor
system which will purportedly will deliver 7.6 GFLOP. For $265k you get
8 CPUs, 64MB, and a claimed 480 MFLOP. The front end runs V.3 and the
main system NX-2 (UNIX based).
Thoughts and questions
Okay, the entry price is fine, I've optioned Sun workstations out
higher than that... some questions come to mind, though.
1. What is NX-2, and does the world need another unix derivative?
2. How much do the compilers do to parallelize applications to use the
system power?
3. What languages are available, and of the languages available which
support parallization and which are just there? ie. is this just a
FORTRAN package with uniprocessor C, etc.
4. Which flavor of FORTRAN (F77 F88) and C (K&R ANSI) does it speak?
So, has anybody been a silent beta site, and can you release some real
information now? I saw two articles, and neither indicated availability.
--
bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anonkale@m.cs.uiuc.edu (01/16/90)
Would someone please post a more detailed technical summary of the new IPSC? Sorry no answer to the poster's questions. (Although I don't think vendors are supllying such automatic parallelization tools for distributed memory machines yet). kale@cs.uiuc.edu L.V. Kale Dept. of Computer Science University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield Ave. Urbana, IL-61801
priol@irisa.irisa.fr (Thierry Priol,TB131,Equipe Pandore,9936200-547,) (01/16/90)
From article <3300095@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, by kale@m.cs.uiuc.edu: > > Would someone please post a more detailed technical summary of the new IPSC? > > Sorry no answer to the poster's questions. > (Although I don't think vendors are supllying such automatic > parallelization tools for distributed memory machines yet). > > > kale@cs.uiuc.edu > L.V. Kale > Dept. of Computer Science > University of Illinois > 1304 W. Springfield Ave. > Urbana, IL-61801 The new iPSC from Intel is in fact an iPSC/2. The "old" 80386 is replaced by a i860. The communication processor is the same. The latency is less because NX/2 run faster on i860. This new machine expands from 8 processors to 128 processors (480 Mflops to 7.6 Gflops, peak performance of course). Prices seem to be from 250,000$ (8 PEs) to 3,000,000$ (128 PEs). It is compatible with the iPSC/2. Parallelogram (Issue 22, January 1990) has a paper on this machine. Thierry PRIOL Thierry PRIOL Phone: 99 36 20 00 IRISA / INRIA U.R. Rennes Fax: 99 38 38 32 Campus Universitaire de Beaulieu Telex: UNIRISA 950 473F 35042 RENNES CEDEX - FRANCE E-mail: priol@irisa.fr