Performance characteristics of the iPSC/860 and CM-2 I/O systems

Typical scientific applications require vast amounts of processing power coupled with significant I/O capacity. Highly parallel computer systems can provide processing power at low cost, but have historically lacked I/O capacity. By evaluating the performance and scalability of the Intel iPSC/860 Concurrent File System and the Connection Machine DataVault, one can get an idea of the current state of parallel I/O performance. The performance tests show that both systems are able to achieve 70% of peak I/O throughput.<
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