Architecture of the VPP500 parallel supercomputer

The VPP500 vector parallel processor is a highly parallel, distributed memory supercomputer that has a performance range of 6.4 to 355 gigaFLOPS and a main memory capacity from 1 to 222 gigabytes. The system scalably supports between 4 and 222 processors interconnected by a high-bandwidth crossbar network. Three key aspects of the VPP500, which are in sharp contrast to current massively parallel systems, characterize its architecture. First the building block is a 1.6 gigaFLOPS vector processor that is more than an order of magnitude faster than the processors used in massively parallel processors (MPP). This high uniprocessor performance reduces the dependence on parallelism. Second the distributed memory architecture and high-bandwidth crossbar network eliminate many of the bottlenecks found in MPP systems. These allow efficient utilization of hardware and have the effect of lessening the complexity of programming parallel computers. Third the system realizes high throughput by its capability to arbitrarily partition the processing elements for flexible multiprocessing