SUPRENUM

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Motherboard of a Suprenum 1 node

Suprenum (supercomputer for numerical applications) was a German research project to develop a parallel computer in the period from 1985 to 1990. Although the Suprenum-1 was the most powerful massively parallel computer system in the world for a short time, was no longer funded the development of a second generation of the system .

history

The SUPRENUM GmbH as the supporting company of the joint project was formed under the influence of two research groups from the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing (GMD). While Ulrich Trottenberg's group in Sankt Augustin was researching parallel numerical methods for solving partial differential equations, GMD First (Berlin), under the direction of Wolfgang Giloi, contributed the necessary know-how in the field of hardware and operating system design.

A total of 14 partners were involved in the main phase of research and development work, namely:

  • four large research institutions (GMD, KfA, KfK, DLR),
  • five universities (Darmstadt, Bonn, Braunschweig, Düsseldorf, Erlangen-Nürnberg),
  • two industrial users (Dornier and KWU),
  • two small and medium-sized companies (Suprenum GmbH and Stollmann GmbH) and the
  • Krupp Atlas Elektronik GmbH.

After the end of the SUPRENUM project, the SUPRENUM GmbH became Pallas GmbH in 1991, which finally sold its High Performance Computing division to Intel in 2003 .

Computer architecture and software

In contrast to the conventional vector computer , the Suprenum-1 worked as a massively parallel computer based on the MIMD principle. The system was scalable up to a total of 256 computer nodes. 16 nodes each formed a cluster and were connected via a local 4 × 4 interconnect network with a bandwidth of 200 Mbit / s (“horizontal buses”). In addition, the clusters were connected by four vertical buses (“global buses”). A separate I / O subsystem established the connection to the local disk of the cluster, the "global bus" and the host computer, a SUN workstation. Each node had a Motorola MC 68020 processor, a numerical coprocessor (Weitek 2264/65) and 8 MB of local memory.

As part of the SUPRENUM project, the microkernel operating system PEACE (Process Execution And Communication Environment) was created under the leadership of Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat , which was designed according to the principles of object orientation and implemented in the C ++ programming language . The communication latency of one millisecond was relatively high for an operating system specialized in massively parallel architectures.

A special Fortran-77 compiler was to be developed for the effective use of the parallel computer for numerical processes , but its implementation caused difficulties due to the limited main memory of the nodes. However, the Suprenum-1 was also programmable using the PARMACS (“Parallel Macros”) communication library. In contrast to the Fortran compiler mentioned above, this programming model is based on the explicit transmission of data (“message passing”) and was later developed into the MPI standard .

A successful focus of the project was on the application software and the associated parallel algorithms. This is where the project differed from many parallel computer developments around the world.

criticism

Because of the high development costs of more than 160 million DM and the limited success in marketing, the hardware development of the project was viewed critically by the public. The Federal Ministry of Research and Technology (BMFT) therefore withdrew from the financing of the actually planned hardware development (second, commercial project phase).

In retrospect, the lack of demand from industry is particularly criticized. As a research project, however, SUPRENUM was very successful, especially in the area of ​​parallel application software. Substantial know-how was built up in the participating institutions, which could be further developed in the European follow-up project GENESIS. PEACE served as the operating system for the non-commercial MANNA architecture. SUPRENUM also influenced the development of other parallel computers such as the Meiko CS-2 .

literature

  • Ulrich Trottenberg: Some Remarks on the SUPRENUM Project (1397–1406)
  • Wolfgang K. Giloi: The SUPRENUM Supercomputer: Goals, Achievements, and Lessons Learned (1407–1425)
  • Oliver A. McBryan: SUPRENUM: Perspectives and Performance (1427–1442)

in Parallel Computing (Special double issue: SUPRENUM and GENESIS) Volume 20, Issue 10-11 (November 1994)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Computer science research in Germany, Bernd Reuse, Roland Vollmar (eds.). Springer (2008), p. 51 doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-76550-9