Communication in iWarp systems

The iWarp processor is a building block for parallel systems and is developed in a joint project by Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Corporation. The iWarp processor integrates computation and communication: the iWarp component architecture consists of a computation agent, capable of delivering 20 MFLOPS and 20 MIPS, and a communication agent that provides a bandwidth of 320 MBytes/sec. We expect the first iWarp-based system to be available early 1990, organized as a 8X8 two-dimensional torus. Fast inter-processor communication is crucial for the success of a parallel system, and this paper describes communication in iWarp systems. We review the communication models, message passing and systolic communication, that this architecture aims to support and introduce the types of networks that can be realized by the iWarp communication agent. We also sketch a programmer interface to these networks and give usage examples for iWarp networks.