Concert: design of a multiprocessor development system

  • Authors:

  • R. R. Halstead, Jr.;T. L. Anderson;R. B. Osborne;T. L. Sterling

  • Affiliations:

  • M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science. Cambridge, Mass.;Axiom Computers, Inc., Milpitas, Cal.;M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science. Cambridge, Mass.;Harris GSS, Melbourne, Fla.

  • Venue:
  • ISCA '86 Proceedings of the 13th annual international symposium on Computer architecture
  • Year:
  • 1986

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Concert is a shared-memory multiprocessor testbed intended to facilitate experimentation with parallel programs and programming languages. It consists of up to eight clusters, with 4-8 processors in each cluster. The processors in each cluster communicate using a shared bus, but each processor also has a private path to some memory. The novel feature of Concert is the RingBus, a segmented bus in the shape of a ring that permits communication between clusters at relatively low cost. Efficient arbitration among requests to use the RingBus is a major challenge, which is met by a novel hardware organization, the criss-cross arbiter. Simulation of the Concert RingBus and arbiter show their performance to lie between that of a crossbar switch and a simple shared intercluster bus.