Newsgroups: comp.parallel,comp.sys.super From: eugene@sally.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) Reply-To: eugene@george.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) Subject: [l/m xx/xx/xx] Dead Comp. Arch. Society c.par/c.s.super (26/28) FAQ Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Date: 26 May 1997 12:03:10 GMT Message-ID: <5mbu5u$jke$1@cnn.nas.nasa.gov> Archive-Name: Last-modified: This space intentionally left blank (temporarily). UNDERDEVELOPMENT This is a roughly chronological list of past supercomputer, parallel computer, or especially "interesting" architectures, not paper designs (See panel 14, for references for those). Computer archeology is important (not merely interesting), because it is the failed projects where real learning takes place. Even Seymour Cray designed "failed" machines. DCAS came from a so-so Robin Williams movie: Dead Poets Society (DPS) which nerd CS students went to see (trust me, he's better in live performance). In turn, the dead-architecture, lessons-learned discussion started in comp.arch later that same year. The idea was to collect material from knowledgeable ex-engineers and former scientists, anonymously if need be, before it was lost (since the company had either died or evolved). The problem is that academic and commercial literature is fraught with all kinds of useless glowing marketing/sales language. We (the net, I didn't do this alone) collected comments anonymously (if need be) to prevent lessons being lost. The idea was that anyone could comment. It was that netters had hashed over this material before so many times, it seemed useful to capture it (like an FAQ ;^). We assembled a list of architectures. Maybe, a third the way through the list, I were asked by certain people with CRI to suspend discussion, because CRI was starting to acquire Supertek (which I personally always thought was a mistake). We never resumed. We lost the inertia. Ever hear of the Gibbs Project? If not: you should not be surprised. Around that same time, ASPLOS came to Santa Clara, where they held a Dead Computer Architecture Society panel session. I had a meeting of some sort (possibly SIGGRAPH) and I missed the starting hour. I gave Peter Capek of IBM TJW a video camera, but I did not keep the tape because I merely wanted to see what I had missed (if I had, I would have given it to J. Fisher who sat on the panel). I did not regard that as recording history. The panel session discussed the various failed minisupercomputer firms (perhaps I should use more flowery marketing language like "attempted?"). Either way, lessons were there in front of 200+ architects, OS and language designers. Perhaps there was another video camera in the room..... Also useful: old header files for those systems which ran C compilers. Most recently, I am reminded of a warm fall Saturday morning in a house on a hill overlooking the beautiful Santa Barbara Channel. George Michael, who I drove just to see Glen Culler (who had suffered a stroke some time back), was talking about "war stories," Ms. Culler [wife and David's mother] chimed in: "I really think you need a better title for your book {one GAM was working on}. No one will buy it with a word like 'war stories' in the title...." Three of us in the room chuckled. She is great. The Dead Computer Architecture Society ====================================== Floating Point Systems ---------------------- Absorbed by Cray Research. Denelcor -------- The Denelcor Heterogeneous Element Processor (HEP) was perhaps the most unusual architecture a student will never get a chance to see. My first knowledge of this machine came from Mike Muuss (BRL, scheduled to get one [4 PEMs delivered]) at a time when the DEC VAX-11/780 was the only VAX around. Later I would invite representatives to Ames. 7600-class scalar CPUs at a time when the Cray-1 was out and the X-MP was just being delivered. 64-bit machine. 1978-1984. Full-Empty bits on the memory, goes way beyond mere Test-and-Set instructions. 13 systems delivered. Photos. Sites: BRL (4 PEMs), GIT, ... Luftansa based in Aurora, CO, East of Denver. Operating systems: HEP-OS and HEP Unix. Programming and architecture manuals buried somewhere. Keywords: dataflow (limited), Problems: somewhat underpowered at the time, programming difficulties. Hardware deadlock. Early inexperience with serious parallel systems. Software. Ambitious. Pipelining. Dataflow. I would hope that a HEP simulator sees the light of day, one of these days. It is suggested that the Horizon simulator is a close approximation to the HEP. I do not know how to obtain it (but know roughly where), I just don't have time. Successor machines: HEP-2 (design 70% complete?) and HEP-3. Horizon (paper design). Tera (pending). Keywords: learning to live with latency. See Dennis Shasha's book Out of Their Minds for a hardly adequate profile on Burton Smith. Elxsi ----- Sunnyvale, CA based super-minicomputer. ECL-technology, bus-oriented, true 64-bit, first IEEE 754 FP machine, SISD (non-vector) cpus (1-10 later 1-16 CPUs). Impressive for its time (designed to compete against the VAX-11/780 AND low end CDC supercomputers). EMBOS ("Unix-like" operating system, "We renamed `grep` to `find.`" "Ah? what did you renamed `find` to?") ENIX Tata Elxsi, sites in Australia and India. Over 200 sites, and many CPUs. 1 CPU per board, Photos exist. The firm dissolved in the late 1980s, people to H-P. Personal experience: Saw and briefly used a 4 processor system which replaced a Cyber 172. Since replaced by networked workstations. That application was real-time flight data anaylsis on experimental aircraft. Lessons? -------- ECL is expensive. Don't screw around with OSes. Understand the market. Alliant ------- Once called Data Flow Systems. comp.sys.alliant FX/8, FX/80, FX/2800, etc. The Friday before Memorial Day 1992. At least that's when 80% of us got laid off. 1) Undercapitalized in a market not as big as it first appeared. > I disagree about the "undercapitalized". 2) Technology changing faster than we could keep up with. (Small Unix-CPU systems can be designed and shipped far faster than a parallel system.) > True, 3) Relying on Intel for a part that didn't _end_ in "86". > True, 4) Long lead time on sales of MPP systems. #include "alliant.h" Multiflow --------- VLIW A couple of us pondered what ever happened to SN#1 of this machine. I saw it! Even typed 'ls' on it! Is the third flag at the assembly room at Convex Computer: Maryland? Myrias ------ What was the US DOD doing funding a Canadian company? That was the first question which ever came into the Flexible Computer (FLEX) ------------------------ I saw it! Even typed 'ls' on it! Scientific Computer Systems (SCS) --------------------------------- Culler-Harris Inc. (CHI) ------------------------ Culler Scientific ----------------- Ametek ------ Guiltech -------- Cydrome ------- 2 delivered Cray Computer Corporation ------------------------- Supercomputer Systems Inc. (1) ------------------------------ Supercomputer Systems Inc. (1) ------------------------------ Cray Research Incorporated -------------------------- Acquired by Silicon Graphics. Still Birth =========== American Supercomputer ---------------------- Half alive companies (software, services, different products only) ==================== CDC (now CDS) --- This section will be added later Thinking Machines Corp. ----------------------- MasPar ------ The Applied Dynamics AD100, and ECL-based multiprocessors with 65-bit (yes, 65, not 64) floating point, did 20 MFlops in 1981. There are a couple of hundred installations, or more, the majority of which are in California. The company was a University of Michigan Aerospace engineering department spinoff located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and founded by three UM profs. Their focus was/is on real time applications, their system had lots of special hardware to interface to r/t equipment. The company still exists, although they are not selling many of these expensive machines any more, and they have a web site at http://www.adi.com. It had a minimal operating system, and in addition to Fortran supported their in-house parallel simulation language (ADSIM) derived from CSSL, for systems of odes. -- Alan Heirich heirich@beazles.asd.sgi.com Q Is it true that supercomputer programmers spend their nights in flophouses? A Only when coming up on a deadline. Stan Lass From dmpresse@ARL.MIL Wed Mar 26 14:24:16 1997 Received: from admii.arl.mil (admii.arl.mil [192.5.25.5]) by sally.nas.nasa.gov (8.8.3/NAS.6.1) with SMTP id OAA03412 for ; Wed, 26 Mar 1997 14:24:15 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 97 17:20:30 EST From: DMP To: eugene Subject: Dead Comp. ... Message-ID: <9703261720.aa24303@ADMII.ARL.MIL> Status: RO Just took a look at your posting for Dead Comp. Arch. Society. I suggest that you add in machines like: ICL DAP (not totally dead) SIMD machines in general KSR1/KSR2