DREAM: a special-purpose architecture for large scale finite difference calculations

Author

Makino, Junichiro ; Ohno, Yousuke ; Ebisuzaki, Toshikazu ; Okumura, Sachiko K.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. Sci. & Graphics, Tokyo Univ., Japan

Volume

i

fYear

1992

fDate

7-10 Jan 1992

Firstpage

161

Abstract

Presents the concept of DREAM (Disk REsource Array Machine), an architecture designed for large-scale finite difference simulations. On preset computers, the size of finite difference calculation is limited by the size of the memory. The DREAM system uses magnetic disks as the main memory. With main memory made of magnetic disks, one can construct a machine with 100 times larger memory for the same cost. With the DREAM architecture, neither the data transfer rate nor the access time of the disk unit limit the computing speed. The data transfer rate is increased by accessing a number of disks in parallel. The access time becomes negligible for finite difference calculations in which all data are accessed in long vectors. A DREAM system with 2 GByte memory and 40-80 MFLOPS speed costs around 20000 dollars. A system with a 1 TByte disk would cost several million dollars

Keywords

computer architecture; difference equations; magnetic disc storage; mathematics computing; special purpose computers; 1 TByte; 2 GByte; 40 to 80 MFLOPS; DREAM; Disk Resource Array machine; access time; data transfer rate; large scale finite difference calculations; long vectors; magnetic disks; main memory; special-purpose architecture; Computational modeling; Computer architecture; Costs; Difference equations; Finite difference methods; Information science; Large-scale systems; Nonlinear equations; Partial differential equations; Supercomputers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Sciences, 1992. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Hawaii International Conference on

Conference_Location

Kauai, HI

Print_ISBN

0-8186-2420-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HICSS.1992.183158

Filename

183158