shs@uts.amdahl.com (Steve Schoettler) (04/08/89)
In article <12289@reed.UUCP> mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg) writes: > >Total aside: Does the Myrias machine exist yet? How come nobody is >willing to post a description of it? I've heard some really unusual >stories, but have seen nothing at all solid. >-- >Mike Rutenberg Reed College, Portland Oregon (503)239-4434 (home) >BITNET: mdr@reed.bitnet UUCP: uunet!tektronix!reed!mdr Well, Chris hasn't responded, so here goes... I think they finally got their act together and have built an interesting machine. Here's some already published information from the COMPCON '89 proceedings: They have developed an ISA to support translation to other target architectures and to provide parallelism to the programmer. Compilation occurs in two phases: a front-end, from C or Fortran to the ISA, and a back-end, from the ISA to some target microprocessor. They liken microcoded machines such as the VAX or 370 to a RISC interpreting their ISA. This may be similar to MIPS U-code or the intermediate code of the HP Precision architecture. The ISA to target machine translation is transparent to the programmer, and all implementations are object-code compatible. now I quote: "To date, there have been three implementations of the G ISA: - on a 68000-based parallel system (SPS-I) - on a Sun 3 workstation, with simulated parallelism (PPWB) - on a 68020-based parallel system (SPS-2) The SPS-1 system was used by Myrias for proof-of-concept, and for software development, from the beginning of 1987 to mid-1989. The PPWB (parallel programmer's workbench) is available as a tool for potential customers to evaluate the programming environment or do program development. The Myrias SPS-2, announced in late 1988, is available for commercial sale in configurations ranging from 60 to over 1,000 processors." "Design has started on an implementation using a new RISC cpu." Sorry if this sounds commercial. I have no relationship with Myrias. -- Steve Schoettler shs@uts.amdahl.com {sun,decwrl,pyramid,ames,uunet}!amdahl!shs Amdahl Corp., M/S 213, 1250 E. Arques Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94088