The Message Driven Processor: an integrated multicomputer processing element
William J. Dally, Andrew A. Chien, J.A.S. Fiske, G. Fyler, Waldemar Horwat, John Sidney Keen, Richard Lethin, Michael D. Noakes, P.R. Nuth, D. Scott Wills · 2003
A description is given of the Message-Driven Processor (MDP), an integrated multicomputer node. It incorporates a 36-bit integer processor, a memory management unit, a router for a 3D mesh network, a network interface, a 4K*36-bit word static RAM (SRAM), and an ECC dynamic RAM (DRAM) controller on a single 1.1 M-transistor VLSI chip. The MDP is not specialized for a single model of computation. Instead, it incorporates efficient primitive mechanisms for communication, synchronization, and naming. These mechanisms support most proposed parallel programming models. Each processing node of the MIT J-Machine consists of an MDP with 1 Mbit of DRAM.>