Touchstone Program Overview
Sigurd L. Lillevik · 1990
The Touchstone Program is a cooperative agreement between the Intel Corporation and DARPAIISTO to advance the state-of-the-art in multicomputer systems. Technically, the program consists of eight system research tracks based on several key emerging technologies. To demonstrate the advances, four rapid prototype systems will be developed with the results of one prototype significantly influencing the next. The first prototype, denoted IOTA, has been completed which implements a scalable Inputloutput subsystem (several ten's of GB of online storage) with a Concurrent File System. In addition, the second prototype has been built and is called the GAMMA prototype. It features a new numeric node based on the Intel i860 microprocessor operating at 40 MHz. With up to 128, i860-based numeric nodes, a GAMMA prototype offers peak performance of 6 GFLOP's. Future Touchstone prototypes will scale to at least 2048 nodes with a peak performance of 150 GFLOP's and 100 KMIP's.