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Multiprocessor research at Åbo Akademi

Multiprocessor research at Åbo Akademi. Ralph-Johan Back. Early 80’s. Work on distributed systems joint work with Reino Kurki-Suonio formalizing, constructing, analyzing, verifying distributed systems point-to-point networks, wlans, etc courses on distributed systems at ÅA

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Multiprocessor research at Åbo Akademi

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  1. Multiprocessor research at Åbo Akademi Ralph-Johan Back

  2. Early 80’s • Work on distributed systems • joint work with Reino Kurki-Suonio • formalizing, constructing, analyzing, verifying distributed systems • point-to-point networks, wlans, etc • courses on distributed systems at ÅA • research on language CSP (C.A.R. Hoare) • very theoretical work, needed some practical case studies to look at

  3. Mid 80’s • Inmos starts designing the transputer • Special processor that has four links for communication with neighbours • Specially designed for building parallel processors T800

  4. Hathi-project • VTT Oulu contacted us, wanted to build a parallel computer • Tapani Äijänen, Kari Leppänen from VTT • TEKES project (Hathi, 1986-88): • VTT built hardware • ÅA built software • First version: Hathi-1, 16 processors • Mats Aspnäs project manager from ÅA • Used for experimentation • Lots of case studies in building parallel systems

  5. Finsoft III program • TEKES starts a new large research program (Finsoft, in three parts, 1988-91) • I was director of Finsoft III- parallel processing and neural networks • 12 different research projects in Finsoft III, 7 in parallel processing and 5 in neural networks • ÅA had 2 large projects: Millipede and Centipede • Millipede: Massively parallel processors • Centipede: Construction and correctness of Parallel Systems • Quite a large number of people enganged in Millipede • U. Solin, Hong Shen got Ph.D. from this • many M.Sc. thesis.

  6. Millipede • Built Hathi-2 in Millipede • VTT/Oulu built hardware • ÅA built software • Largest supercomputer in Finland at that time • Connected to the university network (internet) • A reasonable number of research groups were using Hathi-2, in different universities • Different kinds of applications, mainly CS and scientific computing • Many Ph.D. and M.Sc thesis around Hathi-1 and Hahi-2.

  7. Hathi-2 • Hathi-2 construction • 100 Transputer 800 floating point processors • Connected in a mesh structure • Dynamically reconfigurable connection structure • 25 smaller Transputers connected in a ring, to monitor and control the floating point processors • Physically • size of a larger refrigator, • with 25 boards, • each board containing 4 T800 and 1 smaller transputer

  8. Hathi-2 • Hathi-2 system software • Reconfiguring the conection structure • Mapping logical processor structure onto physical structure • Monitoring software for performance measurements • Hathi-2 application software • Nuclear physics • Solving differential equations • CFD (Computational fluid dynamics) • Cosmology • Full text retrieval • ....

  9. Main challenges • Writing software as collection of parallel processes was difficult • Occam language from Inmos based on CSP • orchestrating communication by means of message passing • problems with deadlocks and livelocks • Lots of algorithmic problems • laying out a logical process net on a physical processor network required strong heuristics • Monitoring computation without interfering required careful embedded system design • Partitioning software to allow for parallel computation • In the end, writing software for massively parallel processors was not that much more difficult that writing ordinary software

  10. Early 90’ • I went for a sabbatical to Caltech (1991-92) • Center for massively parallel computer research • Chuck Seiz built first cosmic cube • Chuck was working on really large processor array (16K processors) • However • I worked mostly on formal methods in programming • And participated in Alain Martins group on the design of asynchronous VLSI circuits • Was not that intrested in multiprocessor hardware design

  11. T9000 transputer • We planned to build Hathi-3 • T800 processors had become too slow compared to the competitors • We needed the new T9000 transputers • very efficient • had wormhole routing, so arbitrary dynamic routing at run time • competed with best Intel and Motorola processors at that time • Inmos had difficulties in building T9000 in quantity • quality of produced processors was not good enough • Inmos was bought up by other companies • in the end, they stopped the development of a new transputer generation

  12. End of Hathi • Did not want to continue working with other processors • Intel or Motorola processors were much inferior to Inmos transputers for parallel systems • Could not build own transputer • Hathi-3 was never built • Hathi-2 was deplugged in 93-94.

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