Ultracomputer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The NYU Ultracomputer is a significant processor design in the history of parallel computing. The system has N processors, N memories and an N log N message-passing switch connecting them. The switch uses an innovative Fetch-and-Add instruction which will combine references from several processors into a single reference, to reduce memory contention.

The machine was developed in the 1980's at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences Computer Science Department. Most of the work done was theoretical. Two prototypes were built:[1][2][3]

  • An 8 processor bus-based machine
  • A 16 processor, 16 memory-module machine with custom VLSI switches supporting the Fetch-and-Add instruction.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The NYU Ultracomputer Project
  2. ^ "An Overview of the NYU Ultracomputer Project (1986)", Allan Gottlieb
  3. ^ The NYU Ultracomputer—designing a MIMD, shared-memory parallel machine (Extended Abstract)
 This computer hardware-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.