DARPA sensor national testbed: hardware and software architecture

A heterogeneous network of parallel computers developed for complex distributed-processing applications is described. Network computers include a Connection Machine, a Butterfly multiprocessor, a WARP systolic array, and a Symbolics and several SUN workstations. An Ethernet and a high-bandwidth APTEC bus support data transfers. Distributed applications are built from individual processes executing on computers in the network. A powerful asynchronous communication facility is built upon the multiple computer operating systems to provide uniform message passing, global memory variables, and remote process execution services to processes. An executive controller and the LISP+ functional language provide a method of integrating distributed processes into an application with transparent control of network resources and communications. Additional applications can be rapidly built from existing processing to support experiments in distributed and parallel applications