The Connection Machine model CM-1 architecture

Author

Kahle, Brewster A. ; Hillis, W. Daniel

Author_Institution

Thinking Machines Corp., Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

19

Issue

4

fYear

1989

Firstpage

707

Lastpage

713

Abstract

An examination is presented of the performance of the Connection Machine model CM-1 system, a general-purpose computer capable of adapting to many sizes and types of data sets. An overview of the hardware and software systems is provided and a simple application is presented from which the raw performance of the machine is examined. This illustrates the power of data-level parallelism and indicates how CM-1 performance is enhanced by the use of virtual processors and variable word size. The CM-1 system consists of a 64000 processor array, from one to four front-end computers, and high-speed peripherals such as disks and image devices

Keywords

parallel architectures; parallel machines; performance evaluation; 64000 processor array; CM-1 architecture; CM-1 performance; Connection Machine; data-level parallelism; front-end computers; general-purpose computer; high-speed peripherals; variable word size; virtual processors; Algorithm design and analysis; Application software; Communication system control; Computer aided instruction; Computer architecture; Concurrent computing; Hardware; Parallel processing; Supercomputers; Switches;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9472

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/21.35335

Filename

35335