Local-Area MultiProcessor: the scalable coherent interface
David B. Gustavson, Qiang Li · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1994
There is rapidly increasing demand for very high performance shared access to distributed data, for multiprocessors, networked workstation clusters, distributed databases, industrial data acquisition and control systems, etc. The objective is to satisfy this demand at the lowest long-term cost. This paper first considers the general properties that an appropriate system architecture should have. A new architectural model, Local-Area Multiprocessor, is introduced. These properties are then considered in more detail, and practical design decisions are made, illustrated by the evolution of the ANSEIEEE standard Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI) as it addressed these issues. Finally, the current status of the various SCI follow-on and support projects is reported.