# 1988 International Specialist Seminar on the Design and Application of Parallel Digital Processors

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Displaying Results 1 - 25 of 35
• ### PICAP 3. A coarse-grained linear SIMD-array

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):74 - 80
Cited by:  Patents (3)
| | PDF (364 KB)

Gives a brief description of the overall architecture of PICAP 3. The redesigned processor module has full floating-point arithmetic so that a 32 module machine will have a peak performance of 320 MFLOP. The authors show how the linear organization and the local address modification can be used efficiently for algorithms like FFT. Transposition, Matrix multiplication, Histogramming, Convolution an... View full abstract»

• ### Software for parallel processing

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):105 - 111
Cited by:  Papers (1)
| | PDF (592 KB)

It is clear that effective parallel processing hardware is already being built now, while the field is at an early stage, and there will be major advances further increasing the potential of parallel processing hardware over the next decade. The problem for parallel processing is the software. The authors present the viewpoints on some approaches to effective parallel processing software View full abstract»

• ### The Computing Surface

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):139 - 142
Cited by:  Patents (1)
| | PDF (336 KB)

The Computing Surface is a flexible, extensible computing system which is constructed from a choice of intelligent building blocks. A variety of building blocks are available with a range of computational or peripheral capabilities View full abstract»

• ### RP3 [parallel machine]

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):67 - 73
| | PDF (420 KB)

The IBM Research Parallel Processor (RP3) is a testbed for the hardware and software of highly parallel MIMD supercomputer designs. It is intended to provide sufficient flexibility to examine a variety of computational models, and sufficient computing power to justify the effort of converting a variety of real applications to parallel form. Basic questions addressed include whether there is a mult... View full abstract»

• ### Concurrency and communication in Delta Prolog

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):94 - 104
| | PDF (932 KB)

Describes and exemplifies the logic programming language Delta Prolog, an extension to Prolog to include AND-concurrency and interprocess communication. Besides its declarative semantics, its operational semantics, comprising distributed backtracking, is especially emphasized. The extension is obtained, at the language level, by introducing three additional goal types: splits, events, and choices.... View full abstract»

• ### Benchmarking parallel architectures

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):134 - 138
| | PDF (440 KB)

In the developing world of parallel processing, there is a fundamental reason for benchmarking. The prime motivation for parallelism is better exploitation of VLSI technology and the role of benchmarking is wider than mere customer evaluation: it is needed to guide the improvement of parallel machines and the genesis of new parallel architectures. The author looks at the problems of benchmarking p... View full abstract»

• ### SUPRENUM: a massively-parallel machine for numerical applications

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):163 - 171
| | PDF (656 KB)

A detailed discussion of the hardware and software architecture of the SUPRENUM supercomputer is presented. A largely bottleneck-free interconnection structure is accomplished in a hierarchical manner: the machine consists of up to 16 clusters', and each cluster consists of 16 working nodes' plus some organizational nodes. The node is accommodated on a single circuit board; its architecture is b... View full abstract»

• ### The Cedar parallel processor: machine organization and software

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):62 - 66
| | PDF (392 KB)

Cedar is a shared-memory parallel processor organized into processor clusters. A prototype of this machine is being built at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There are three levels of parallelism in Cedar. The vector and intracluster parallelism are controlled by the hardware, and the intercluster parallelism can be accessed via Xylem, the operating system. Xylem also provides facil... View full abstract»

• ### Design by calculation and proof

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):87 - 93
| | PDF (432 KB)

Expounds a philosophy of engineering design which is stimulated, guided and checked by mathematical calculations and proofs. The philosophy is illustrated by a familiar example, the design of a hardware circuit for addition of natural numbers in binary representation View full abstract»

• ### A loosely coupled parallel LISP execution system

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):128 - 133
| | PDF (552 KB)

There are many ways in which it is possible to start the quest for parallelism in a computing system. The work described in this paper started from a number of clear criteria which have shaped the whole project. These are presented and explained in the first section, and this leads directly to the hardware environment. The software environment forms the subject of the second section. There are a n... View full abstract»

• ### Formal derivation of hardware

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):189 - 193
| | PDF (316 KB)

Looks at the need for more formality in hardware design. This is because (a) increasing complexity is pushing present techniques to their limits; and (b) computer systems are more and more often being put in charge of human lives. Systems for aircraft flight control, nuclear reactor shut-down, patient care in hospital and so on must not only be correct they must be seen to be correct. Formal metho... View full abstract»

• ### Neural network computation

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):160 - 162
| | PDF (220 KB)

Since 1982 there has been an enormous resurgence of interest in the possibility of making trainable, general purpose pattern recognition machines which are intended to mimic some of the processing abilities of human brains. A neural network `computer' consists of a set of processing units (or artificial neurons) joined together by a set of weighted connections. Such networks are programmed by appl... View full abstract»

• ### Parallel processing-parallel thinking-the needs of a National Strategy

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):202 - 203
| | PDF (116 KB)

There are three possible solutions to satisfy the demands for increased computing performance: increased MICRO miniaturisation could, theoretically, enable von Neumann machines to be constructed in smaller and smaller physical volumes that would enable the frequency/wavelength dichotomy to be controlled; a space-time computing machine could be designed that takes account of the fundamental physics... View full abstract»

• ### International Specialist Seminar on the Design and Application of Parallel Digital Processors (Conf. Publ. No.298)

Publication Year: 1988
| | PDF (152 KB)

The following topics were dealt with: parallel application needs; parallel numerical methods; parallel applications; parallel architectures; parallel programming languages; performance evaluation; parallel machines; and future and current research activities. Abstracts of individual papers can be found under the relevant classification codes in this or other issues View full abstract»

• ### Applications of parallel processors in molecular biology

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):53 - 56
| | PDF (312 KB)

Molecular biology analyses the molecular basis of living systems. The chemical complexity of biological systems of importance (e.g. enzyme action, organelle assembly, membrane transport, antigen-antibody reactions, cell recognition and many others) is at the extreme end of the range to which many physical methods of analysis can be applied. Developments will follow progress in the physical science... View full abstract»

• ### Fault tolerant, self repairing transputer arrays

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):81 - 82
| | PDF (148 KB)

The transputer is a device that has unique features making it suitable for both computationally intensive and fault tolerant applications. A particularly important features is that transputers have been designed as components of multi-processor systems. To operate in space, devices need to be resistant to radiation effects. Gamma particles have a cumulative effect which causes the power consumptio... View full abstract»

• ### On new generation dataflow architecture

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):112 - 115
Cited by:  Patents (1)
| | PDF (220 KB)

Dataflow machines execute instructions only when the operands are available. Therefore each execution of instructions are treated as an independent event and exploitation of maximum concurrency at a scalar level, vector level, and function level is achieved. The author describes the architecture of a dataflow supercomputer, SIGMA-1, developed over several years. Since the SIGMA-1 system forms a pi... View full abstract»

• ### The effective use of SIMD processor arrays

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):143 - 147
Cited by:  Papers (1)
| | PDF (332 KB)

Many computationally intensive problems have a very high degree of structured, fine-grain parallelism and benefit substantially from highly parallel execution. Such problems map efficiently on to truly parallel SIMD (Single Instruction stream, Multiple Data stream) processor arrays. This is essentially because the control, synchronisation and communication associated with the constituent parallel ... View full abstract»

• ### The Edinburgh Concurrent Supercomputer: project and applications

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):172 - 179
| | PDF (976 KB)

The Edinburgh Concurrent Supercomputer (ECS) project is built around a Meiko Computing Surface, and offers a networked multi-user facility for academic, industrial and commercial applications. The authors describe first the background to the project, and the present status of funding, hardware and software. The facility has presently more than 100 registered users, the authors describe some of the... View full abstract»

• ### Bit level pipelining of recursive computations

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):194 - 198
Cited by:  Papers (1)
| | PDF (372 KB)

Presents a novel solution to the problems of pipelining bit parallel recursive operations at bit level. A bit level first order IIR filter section is presented in which bit level pipelining is used to obtain a high throughput rate. These ideas are then extended and a simple bit level systolic building block is presented which can be used in the construction of a wide range of recursive filters. Th... View full abstract»

• ### Matrix substructuring, domain decomposition, and particle methods: current trends for solving PDEs in parallel

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):1 - 10
| | PDF (796 KB)

Numerical simulations take the form of numerical models and provide a bridge between the physical world and the computer where they attempt to approximate the actual physical mechanics of the problem. The authors describe some of the research directions that have been motivated by the addition of pipelining and parallelism in the architectures of certain scientific computers View full abstract»

• ### A taxonomy of parallel computer architectures

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):57 - 61
Cited by:  Papers (2)  |  Patents (1)
| | PDF (436 KB)

Discusses a framework within which it is possible to compare the overall performance of a wide variety of parallel computing systems. In this context, a computing system comprises components at several levels of abstraction, ranging from applications, through algorithms and various levels of language, to hardware implementation. The basis of the desired framework will be a series of classification... View full abstract»

• ### Language first philosophy [parallel computers]

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):83 - 86
| | PDF (316 KB)

Parallel computers are an obvious way of providing increased computing power and utilizing the benefits of VLSI technology in a cost-effective manner. However, it is difficult to argue that parallel computing has been an unqualified success since the first serious attempts at real parallel structures some 20 years ago. The author argues that this can be attributed, to a large extent, to the concen... View full abstract»

• ### Functional programming on the GRIP multiprocessor

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):116 - 127
| | PDF (764 KB)

Most MIMD computer architectures can be classified as tightly-coupled or loosely-coupled, depending on the relative latencies seen by a processor accessing different parts of its address space. By adding microprogrammable functionality to the memory units, the authors have developed a MIMD computer architecture which explores the middle region of this spectrum. This has resulted in an unusual and ... View full abstract»

• ### Systolic arrays for high throughput front-end signal processing

Publication Year: 1988, Page(s):148 - 152
| | PDF (328 KB)

After reviewing the requirement for and form of systolic arrays for front-end processing, the author discusses work that has led to the construction of such an array in order to demonstrate the use of these structures for adaptive beamforming. He concludes by considering the design of a very high performance integrated circuit (VHPIC) chip which will enable the implementation of high through-put f... View full abstract»