TOMP project

The main objective of the TOMP (Torino multiprocessor) project was the development of a frame under which a wide variety of multiple processor systems could be sized up, designed, and built. The frame was not conceived for a specific purpose, the basic goal being to cover a wide area of applications, where the key parameters were the relevance of the distribution of the functions, and the computational needs required by real-time applications. The paper presents the methodologies used throughout the project, describing the development and the use of description and performance evaluation techniques, the choices at the architectural level, the design of a high-performance backplane bus, the basic software developed to make the hardware operational, and the results of some experiments on parallel programming.