Users' experience with the ILLIAC IV system and its programming languages

Authors:
R. H. Perrott;D. K. Stevenson
Affiliations:
Institute for Advanced Computation, NASA-Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California;Institute for Advanced Computation, NASA-Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
Venue:
ACM SIGPLAN Notices
Year:
1981

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Abstract

The ILLIAC IV is a unique machine which has led the research and development of lockstep parallel processing. The machine has been operational since 1973, in experimental mode, and since 1975 in full production mode. There has been on the order of a hundred users of the machine and these users and their codes have been well documented. Four languages are available on the machine ranging from high level to machine code. A survey has been conducted of the users in order to determine how the ILLIAC IV has been employed and how the high level programming languages have facilitated the use of this machine. This paper presents the results of that survey.The survey attempts to confirm or eliminate some of the folklore that has grown up around the ILLIAC IV facility. It can be helpful in the design of the next generation of supercomputers and their languages and in the improvement of the present generation of languages. The responses to the survey indicate: 1) that the ILLIAC IV has been accepted by the scientific community; 2) that a wide range of different application areas have used the machine; 3) that users have had to construct their programs so as to minimise the effects of the serious bottleneck created by the movement of data between the main and backing stores; and 4) that the high level programming languages available have insufficient or inefficient structures which at times require the use of machine code.