The MULTIPLUS/MULPLIX parallel processing environment

The MULTIPLUS project aims at the development of a modular parallel architecture suitable for the study of several aspects of parallelism in both true shared memory and virtual shared memory environments. The MULTIPLUS architecture is able to support up to 1024 Processing Elements based on SPARC microprocessors. The MULPLIX Unix-like operating system offers a suitable parallel programming environment for the MULTIPLUS architecture by providing facilities for the creation of threads, the allocation of private and shared memory space and the efficient use of synchronization primitives. After presenting the main features of the MULTIPLUS architecture and of the MULPLIX operating system, the paper describes in detail the design and the implementation of the three MULTIPLUS architecture basic hardware modules: the Processing Element, the Multistage Interconnection Network and the I/O Processor. In addition, the definition of the MULPLIX parallel programming primitives is discussed and their use is illustrated through an example. Finally, future directions in the development of the MULTIPLUS research project are commented.