Scalable parallel systems: past, present and future (from an IBM perspective)

We survey in this paper the evolution of scalable parallel computers, from the perspective of the IBM SP product line. To achieve success in the marketplace, the SP had to be more than a bunch of rack-mounted workstations, connected with a LAN. A high-performance interconnect is key to parallel performance. The current, second generation SP switch, supports a bandwidth of 150 MB/s in each direction per node.