The Alpha 21364 network architecture

Author

Mukherjee, Shubhendu S. ; Bannon, Peter ; Lang, Steven ; Spink, Aaron ; Webb, David

Author_Institution

Alpha Dev. Group, Compaq Comput. Corp., Shrewsbury, MA, USA

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

113

Lastpage

117

Abstract

The Alpha 21364 processor provides a high-performance, highly scalable, and highly reliable network architecture. The router runs at 1.2 GHz and routes packets at a peak bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s. The network architecture scales up to a 128-processor configuration, which can support up to four terabytes of distributed Rambus memory and hundreds of terabytes of disk storage. The distributed Rambus memory is kept coherent via a scalable, directory-based cache coherence scheme. The network also provides a variety of reliability features, such as per-flit ECC. These features make the 21364 network architecture well-suited to support communication-intensive server applications

Keywords

cache storage; computer networks; multiprocessing systems; protocols; reliability; Alpha 21364; Rambus memory; cache coherence; communication-intensive server applications; network architecture; per-flit ECC; reliability features; Artificial intelligence; Bandwidth; Clocks; Computer architecture; Delay; Microprocessors; Network servers; Random access memory; Telecommunication computing; Transistors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Hot Interconnects 9, 2001.

Conference_Location

Stanford, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7695-1357-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HIS.2001.946702

Filename

946702