Image processing PCI-based shared memory architecture design

The object of the GFLOPS project was to study all aspects concerning the design of a low cost parallel architecture. The project´s aim was to develop a parallel architecture as well as its software environment to implement image processing applications efficiently. The proposed architecture supports up to 512 processor nodes, which are PC mother boards, connected over a scalable and cost-effective network, via the PCI-bus, at a constant cost per node. The aim is to obtain at low cost a scalable virtually shared memory machine with a physically distributed architecture. The authors present the design of the GFLOPS machine and evaluate the effectiveness of the mechanisms incorporated. The analysis of the architecture´s behavior was conducted with image processing algorithms, written in C. A development environment, especially a C data-parallel language, has been built for this purpose