Multi-Flex Machines Preliminary Report
John R. Rice · Purdue e-Pubs (Purdue University System) · 1986
The multi-FLEX machines use FLEX/32 multi-computer modules for larger machines.These machines provide wide flexibility and scalability.the innovative ingredients of the design are: (a) use of locally shared memory in addition to local and global memory, (b) very high internal and external bandwidth, (c) no use of network prolocals for communication, Cd) distribution of external I/O throughout the machine.The 64 node FLEX-<:ube would have 1500 processors and 700 megawords of memory, operate at 2.5 gigaflops and have external I/O bandwidth of 4 Gigabytes/second.It is conjectured that it could service 40,000 tenninals or service one job to do weather forecasts 1000 times faster than real time (covering the entire nonhern hemisphere with about 500 million unknowns.)• Supported in part by Air Foroe OffiC& of Scientific RllSClIrcl1 gnml AFOSR-84-0385 and AlTTIY Resea.rcl1Office conlT1lCl = * faster processors (say 10 :rvnPS at current prices) * denser memories (say 4 Mbytes instead of 1) * specialized processor boards (pipelined vector processors in the 10-20 MfIops range, FFf boards, ...)