Design overview of the Shiva

An overview of the Shiva multiprocessor architecture currently under development is presented. Shiva is a multiprocessor designed to exploit the input/output and operating system features of existing computers. It is intended to supply its parent system with supercomputer performance over a wide range of applications without the need for any special parallel programming on the part of the user. Unusual features of the Shiva are its ability to reconfigure itself under program control and the use of a hybrid Von Neumann/dataflow software preprocessor to extract parallelism from users' programs. In order to maximize performance in different parts of a program, Shiva can act as a multiple-input-multiple-data (MIMD), pseudo single-input-multiple-data (SIMD) or coarse-grained dataflow machine on a von Neumann hardware platform comprising commercially available microprocessors.<>