The iPSC/2 direct-connect communications technology

  • Authors:
  • S. F. Nugent

  • Affiliations:
  • Intel Scientific Computers

  • Venue:
  • C3P Proceedings of the third conference on Hypercube concurrent computers and applications: Architecture, software, computer systems, and general issues - Volume 1
  • Year:
  • 1988

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Abstract

This paper describes the hardware architecture and protocol of the message routing system used in the iPSC®/2 concurrent computer. The Direct-Connect router was developed by Intel Scientific Computers to replace the store-and-forward message passing mechanism used in the original iPSC system. The router enhances the performance of the iPSC/2 system by reducing the message passing latency, increasing the node-to-node channel bandwidth and allowing simultaneous bi-directional message traffic between any two nodes. The new communication system has nearly equal performance between any pair of processing nodes, making the network topology more transparent to the user.The Direct-Connect router is a specialized self-contained hardware module attached to each hypercube node. The router is implemented in CMOS programmable gate-arrays with advanced CMOS buffering. Routers are connected by full-duplex bit-serial channels to form a Boolean n-cube network. The router also provides a high performance interface between the node memory bus and the network.