Towards The Supernode Computer

28 EE March 1988 TOWARDS THE SUPERNODE COMPUTER by Dr. Chris Jesshope, CEng, FBCS, MIEE Department of Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton University Esprit is a research programme sup- ported by the Commission of the European Communities. It is currently funding a collaborative project to de- velop and exploit a low cost, high per- formance supercomputer, in which Southampton University(") is playing a major role. Unlike conventional supercomputers, such as the Cray 1 and Cray 2, which tend to use expensive ultra-fast circuits, the prototype being designed at Southampton University makes use of the latest microprocessor technology. The Supernode supercomputer is based on the revolutionary transputer, which is a modern microprocessor designed by INMOS (2) as a component of parallel processing systems. Parallel processing uses many processors to obtain increased system performance. For example, the Supernode supercom- puter may eventually contain several thousand transpute...