pkoehnko@salyko.doit.sub.org (Peter Koehnkow) (10/10/90)
Top-of-the-Line i860-Based 64-bit
Parallel Processor Offers 120 MIPS
Just on time for the CEBIT '90, DSM Computersysteme of Munich,
West Germany, presents the SPC-860, a PC add-on board
with unprecedented computing power. Designed and implemented
on the basis of the new Intel microprocessor i860, it offers
80 Mega Flops (!) with single or 60 Mega Flops with double precision.
Up to 256 SPC-860 boards can be configured, giving a maximum
performance of up to 20 Giga FLOPS.
The SPC 860 board costs only a fraction of the investment
for a supercomputer to get a computer system with equivalent
computing power. The board uses a modular, scalable design.
Its heart is the new microprocessor i860 from Intel, a 64-bit CPU
of the RISC generation. The SPC-860 board can be used in any
commercial personal computer and can be addressed as a parallel
processor under the MS-DOS, UNIX or OS/2 operating systems.
Every SPC-860 board has four transputer links
and a high-speed dual port RAM. The memory contents can be transferred
through a flat cable with 4,5 Mbytes/sec.
The transputer links allow the implementation of cube structures,
while the parallel link is designed for a ring structure. For
driving a physically distributed system, the SPC 860-boards can be
booted via the PC bus or the transputer links as required.
Another dual port RAM controls the communication with the PC. It
can be enabled, disabled or displaced by means of a control
register in the PC address space. In addition, a broadcast window
is available for fast simultaneous data transfer to several SPC-860
boards. The dual port RAM (AD63310) also contains semaphore registers
which help reduce the overhead in a multi-processor environment. The
component allows the PC to generate an interrupt with the i860, and
vice versa.
The board is supplied with an i860 cross-assembler which runs under
MS-DOS. In addition, a comprehensive package of programming examples
is provided which makes programming of the board easy. The examples
are written in various programming languages, since basically any
programming language can be used on the PC side, as long as it allows
access to memory and to I/O.
Also supplied are the complete sources of the utilities (e.g. loader,
debugger, etc.). This makes small modifications easy. The purchase
price further includes the source of the SPC-860's boot EPROM. The
supplied comprehensive manual even includes the board's circuit
diagrams.
Get more information from
DSM
Computer Systems
Landwehrstrasse 37
D-8000 Munich 2
West Germany
Tel.: (089)55195-0
Fax: (089)598261
Benchmark-Tests SPC-860 board
=============================
Dhrystone 1.1 for Integer performance
-------------------------------------
Dhry's Rel. System
/sec
89552 47.5 i860 uP 40 MHz SPC-860 board
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Whetstone for floating point performance
----------------------------------------
DP SP System
(kwips) (kwips)
24537 30800 i860 uP 40 MHz SPC-860 board
--------------------------------------------
Benchmarks have been cut for shorter transmission!