PowerMANNA: a parallel architecture based on the PowerPC MPC620

The paper presents PowerMANNA, a distributed-memory parallel computer system based on the 64-Bit PowerPC processor MPC620. The PowerMANNA node architecture supports all the sophisticated features of the MPC620 and incorporates important architectural concepts that allow us to exploit the performance of modern superscale microprocessor in the context of massively parallel supercomputing. The two-way processor nodes of PowerMANNA are embedded in a powerful communication system supporting low-latency communication and maximum connectivity. Processing and communication performance of an eight-node prototype are shown and compared with shared-memory machines and clusters. In the course of the presentation, experience gained with the PowerPC MP620 processor is discussed.