From: lycmit@x1sun6.ccl.itri.org.tw (Yin-Chih Lin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Could I compete the low-end CM5 with multiple SPARCstations? (Summary)
Date: 24 Jul 92 17:35:32 GMT

Greetings:

Pardon me for using the net bandwidth again. I have received many replies
about the subject. So I suppose maybe it will be fine to summarize these
responses and repost again. (I apologize if someone don't think so).

Most of notes imply that it is *almost impossible* to challenge the
CM5 with the Sparcstations without extra facilities (vector processors,
high-speed net, good s/w).

However, it might be *not true* in my case. I know another team in 
ITRI/CCL has developed the VP processors for SPARCstations (I haven't
inquired the actual spec. and performace of this processor). I also
belileve there are vendors provide the FDDI add-on cards for SBus.
The only hurt is the *software*. It is true that my organization
is impossible to sanctify such project ( especially when there is
one IBM ES-9000/820 machine will be available from National High Speed
Computer Center in my country. I don't know *why* they select IBM).

But I also got some directions from the receiving messages. Some of
them (PVM, p4) are positive encourages for me to look for what I like 
with the current facilities.

Anyway, I would be glad to hear any comments about the subject in any
time. Please feel free to email me if you have further directions.

Thanks go to following people (according the order in my mail box, 
date to July 24, 12:00 - London time plus 8 hours)
	
	Peter Su		psu@cs.duke.edu
	Dirk Grunwald		grunwald@foobar.cs.colorado.edu
	Jon Mellott		jon@alpha.ee.ufl.edu
	Jerry Callen		jcallen@Think.COM
	K. J. Chang		kjchang@hpl.hp.com
	Steve Roy		ssr@ama.caltech.edu
	Scott Townsend		fsset@bach.lerc.nasa.gov
	Rowan Hughes		csrdh@marlin.jcu.edu.au
	Mark Homewood		fred@meiko.com
	Matthias Schumann	schumanm@informatik.tu-muenchen.de
	Mike Davis		davis@ee.udel.edu
	Michael Kolatis		kolatis@cs.utk.edu
	Dave			dave@sep.stanford.edu
	Henrik Klagges		henrik@tazdevil.llnl.gov
	(anonymous)		vu0208@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
	Bob Felderman		feldy@isi.edu
	Ian L. Kaplan		ian@MasPar.COM
	Bill Maniatty		maniattb@cs.rpi.edu
	Keith Bierman		Keith.Bierman@Eng.Sun.COM
	Paul Whiting 		Paul.G.Whiting@mel.dit.csiro.au

Here are the original message and replies:

------------------------------ ( original ) --------------------------------

We have many Sun's SPARCstations (from 1, 1+, IPC, to 2, 670MP and 
SPARCstation 10 in the near future), and the new-version multi-thread
OS (SunOS 5.0) will be installed on these computers.

I find that the Think Machines Corp.'s latest MPP machine CM-5 is also
adopted the SPARC processors (22 MIPS per processor) as its nodes.
According the "Parallel Processing" Oct. 1991 issue, the price of 32-node
CM5 model will sell at about $1.4 million.

I am curious, if I connect 32 SPARCstation 10 model 30 (33MHz, SuperSPARC
module with 86.1 MIPS - Sun Micro adverted!?) computers (loosely-coupled
MIMD multicomputers?) either by Ethernet, ISDN or FDDI with the multi-
thread OS and might use facilities from Linda-like distributed data
structures. Is it possible for me to obtain the reasonable performance
when compared with the 32-node TMC CM5 (SIMD machine)?

I will be highly appreciated for receiving any comments. Please direct
your opinion (or abuse) to me by email. so the news bandwidth won't be
wasted (except this one!).

Thanks,

P.S. I would also like to know, is there any one config their SPARCstations
to a message-passing MIMD multicomputers rather than just merely LAN-
based networking workstations?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yin-Chih Lin                            Industrial Technology Research
email: lycmit@x1sun6.ccl.itri.org.tw    Institute  (ITRI)
phone: 886-35-917331
fax:   886-35-917503                    Computer & Comm. Research Labs.(CCL)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


------------------------------ ( reply #1 ) --------------------------------

From: Peter Su <psu@cs.duke.edu>

The answer depends on two things:

1) Would your code be able to take advantage of the CM-5 vector units?
2) Does your code need to do a lot of communication/synchronization.

If you have code that breaks up into big, independent chunks which do
not vectorize easily, and you have libraries to manage workstaion
clusters, then I can't see why the CM-5 would be much better.

Oh, the CM-5 probably has more usable memory per node, since data
processing nodes don't run the full OS.

Pete

------------------------------ ( reply #2 ) --------------------------------

From: Dirk Grunwald <grunwald@cs.colorado.edu> 

The CM-5 also has 200Mf vector processors and a very fast network.
most importantly, it has good software.

------------------------------ ( reply #3 ) --------------------------------

From: Jon Mellott <jon@alpha.ee.ufl.edu>

It depends a lot on the type of tasks that you are doing. If your tasks 
are characterized by lots of communication between processes/processors, 
then the CM-5 will probably eat you alive. Also, the CM-5 does have 
the option of a vector processor for each processor module, so you 
could potentially be chewed up there also. 

BTW, if your intent is to do something like this, then you might 
consider going to something like the SS10 model 54 (four processors). 
You'd be money ahead on a per processor basis since you wouldn't have 
to buy as many pizza boxes per processor. Also, if your code is 
amenable to multi-threading then you might be able to derive a big 
benefit from running on a multiprocessor machine, especially from an 
inter-thread communications standpoint. 

Lemme see, the SS10 model 54 is listing at something like $50K, so 
for a million bucks you could get twenty of them. That'd give you 
eighty processors. You could spend the savings on FDDI interfaces 
so you don't get butchered by ethernet latencies. 

BTW, this sort of thing has been described before in the literature. 
I don't recall where, but it has been done before. 

Good luck,
Jon Mellott
High Speed Digital Architecture Laboratory
(jon@alpha.ee.ufl.edu)

------------------------------ ( reply #4 ) --------------------------------

From: Jerry Callen <jcallen@Think.COM>

[Claimer: I work for Thinking Machines.]

There is a lot more to a CM-5 than SPARCs and memory.

Specifically, there are two high-bandwidth, low-latency networks. The
"control network" can perform a number of combining operations (max,
add, or, xor), broadcasting and synchronization functions. The "data
network" allows point-to-point communications between multiple nodes
SIMULTANEOUSLY at very high bandwidths (>5MB/sec/node). This gives a
32 node machine a (very conservatively rated) aggregate bandwidth of
160MB/sec. You just cannot get this kind of bandwidth out of Ethernet
or even FDDI. Also, the network interface is mapped into user memory
space, so you don't have to go through operating system layers to get
at it.

There are also 4 vector units on each node; each vector unit has a
dedicated bank of memory, yielding very high memory bandwidth. Each
vector unit can do 32MFLOPS (peak, but I have seen codes get >75% of
this).

Also, a point of clarification: the CM-5 is NOT a "SIMD machine." While
the networks provide excellent support for a data-parallel programming
model, TMC supports a message-passing programming model as well.

Call TMC at (617) 234-1000 and ask for a CM-5 Technical Summary if you
would like more information.

-- Jerry Callen
   jcallen@world.std.com           (preferred)
   jcallen@think.com               (OK, too)
   {uunet,harvard}!think!jcallen   (if you must)

------------------------------ ( reply #5 ) -------------------------------- 

From: K. J. Chang <kjchang@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com> 

Of course! That's why there are at least 20 new RISC-based workstations 
being designed here at Silicon Valley. Mainframe or Supercomputer vendors
do not release their SPCEfp92 or SPECint92 because their products are
not cost-effective.

You may want to read Chap. 2 of "Computer Architecture A Quantitative
Approach" (John Hennessy and David Patterson), especially Figure 2.25
which tells you that those expensive computers' MFLOPS are in the range
of 8.3 to 24.4 only.

-- 
K J Chang, Hewlett-Packard ICBD R & D,                      (())_-_(())
Palo Alto, CA 94304                                          | (* *) | 
Internet: kjchang@hpl.hp.com           a UCLA Bruin  -->    {  \_@_/  }
voice mail: (415)857-4604                                     `-----' 

------------------------------ ( reply #6 ) -------------------------------- 

From: Steve Roy <ssr@ama.caltech.edu>

There are three main differences that insure that a network of
workstations will not compete with the CM5.

The first difference is a hardware one: The Sparc in the CM5 is really
just a controller/scheduler for custom vector/memory processors.  Each
sparc controls 4 of these processors.  These vector boards are much
much faster than the sparc for number crunching, the main point of
this sort of machine.  The fact that it has Sparcs in it is sort of
irrelevant for number crunching considerations.

The second difference is the speed of the communications: the CM5 has
a very fast and sophisticated network that allows arbitrary
permutation communication to proceed at not less than 5MByte/sec per
processor.  This is the high bandwidth network; there is also a lower
bandwidth but also lower latency network that is used primarily for
fast syncronizations between processors.  There is a third network for
diagnostics.  The networks are redundant so the machine can continue
to work given any single point failure, an important consideration for
a massively parallel system.

The third difference is the integrated and powerful software that
allows easy parallel coding and debugging.  The debugger is X-based
and allows you to click on (for example) an array name and display its
contents either as numbers or as a contour plot.  The first compiler
is an F90 variant, there will later be ports of C* and presumably
*Lisp. 

It was a good question tho.  I hope you post a summary to the net.

Steve Roy.-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Roy                     |  Life.  Don't talk to me about life.
ssr@ama.caltech.edu           |
                              |

------------------------------ ( reply #7) -------------------------------- 

From: Scott Townsend <fsset@bach.lerc.nasa.gov>

While the individual processors will be comparable to those in the CM5,
as a group your clustered processors will approximate the CM5 only if your
parallel application does almost zero communications.

We've run some experiments here with a cluster of RS6000's.  On applications
which require very little communication relative to the computation rate,
things run very well.  As soon as you get into more typical parallel
applications, things slow down REAL fast!

The main reason for this is latency.  Local networks are not designed for
very low latency.  Unless the interconnect in a parallel processor has _very_
low latency compared to CPU speed, you spend all your time waiting for
messages instead of computing.


-- 
Scott Townsend,  Sverdrup Technology Inc.  NASA Lewis Research Center Group
fsset@bach.lerc.nasa.gov

------------------------------ ( reply #8) --------------------------------

From: Rowan Hughes <csrdh@marlin.jcu.edu.au>

You'd need to connect them together with at least FDDI. The bandwidth between
nodes is the biggest problem with MPP machines. 1000Mb/s would be better.
Also, you probably won't be able to use more nodes than 16, since the
search/latency overheads become prohibitive on a single commnication rail, ie
you've got no secondary search engine.

At the moment the CM-5 is just a bunch of Sparc stations in one box, the vector
cpu's haven't been fabricated yet (and probably never will be).  The $1.4M is 
really just for a bit of software.

-- 
Rowan Hughes                                James Cook University
Marine Modelling Unit                       Townsville, Australia.
Dept. Civil and Systems Engineering         csrdh@marlin.jcu.edu.au

------------------------------ ( reply #9) --------------------------------

From: Mark Homewood <fred@meiko.co.uk> 

Besides designing FPU's for SPARC Meiko manufactuers machines based around
something like what you have described. We buy commodity boards or workatation
components and produce (hopefully) cost effective parallel supercomputers.
We do find it necessary to add some extra communication bandwidth and
reduced latency. Clearly a 32node TMC is out to lunch, we do a similar size
machine for a fraction of the price. The major difference is that ours can be
used as a network of Sun as well, and at the same time.

There is some public domain software which lets you use your machines as a
parallel machine. This is called PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine), try an
anonymous ftp to <research.att.com> in dir <netlib/pvm>. There is a Readme
and index. You can compile and configure for your network.

Though as one of your repliers states, latency is the thing. This is what 
Meiko (and TMC, though over-priced) are selling.

Fred

Meiko Limited

fred@meiko.com 

------------------------------ ( reply #10) -------------------------------

From: Matthias Schumann <schumanm@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>

Hi,

here at the Technical University Munich an Environtment for parallel
Programming called MMK was developed, that runs on Intel iPSC 2 / 860 
MIMD-Supercomputers. 
There is antother version called MMKx, which offers the same functions
(task creation, deletion /  communication / semaphores, synchronization /
.....) on a Network of Sun-Workstations connected over an Ethernet.

The question about the CM5 is application depended, i would say. Code
that is written especially for SIMD machines will run faster on the 
CM. If you got general purpose code the perormance of the sun network
will increase but if it could reach the CMs performance i got no idea,
even though i got no information about the inter Processor communication
network in the CM5.

Ciao 
         Matt

--
| Matthias Schumann   Department of Computer Science/SAB   TU Muenchen |
| schumanm@informatik.tu-muenchen.de                       Arcisstr.21 |
| Phone: +49 89 2105 2036                              8000 Muenchen 2 |

------------------------------ ( reply #11) -------------------------------

From: Mike Davis <davis@ee.udel.edu>

I would be interested in any responses you get on this subject.  I'am involved
in a project looking into running distributed simulations on a group of FDDI
connected SPARCstation10's running Linda.  Since the closest thing we have
to compare to is an older 16 processor Sequent, I can't help with your CM5
questions..

thanks
mike

davis@ee.udel.edu

------------------------------ ( reply #12) -------------------------------

From: Michael Kolatis <kolatis@cs.utk.edu>

Let's see, from what I know so far, one node of a TMC CM-5
will have a SPARC chip that performs about 5 Mflops.  Thus, 
with 32 nodes, you would expect a peak of 160 Mflops.

Now, a SPARCstation 10 with 4 processors is supposed to perform
at 19.7 Mflops per processor (i.e. almost 80 Mflops).  Thus,
32 * 80 = 2560 Mflops = 2.56 Gflops.

However, each node of a CM-5 will eventually include 4 vector
processors (TMC calls them "floating point accelerators") which
will increase the node power to 128 Mflops per node (which makes
a 32 node CM-5 capable of 4 Gflops).

Thus, theoretically, with the communication speed losses involved
with the SPARC 10's & the lack of a parallel programming language for
them the SPARC's would lose (also, note that if a SPARC 10 does have
4 processors, your connection would have 128 processors--not 32).

However, hooking the SPARC 10's together using PVM(Parallel Virtual
Machine) as parallel software would be very interesting...
and certainly makes the efforts toward massively parallel
computing very viable.

Michael Kolatis
UTenn
Joint Institute for Computational Science

------------------------------ ( reply #13) -------------------------------

From: Dave <dave@sep.stanford.edu>

Unfortunately not, each CM-5 node also has 4 custom vector units running
at 120MFlop peak each. That, and the high bandwidth network are what you are
really paying for with a CM-5.

------------------------------ ( reply #14) -------------------------------

From: Henrik Klagges <henrik@tazdevil.llnl.gov>

I think it is a good idea. At LLNL we have a cluster of RS6000, connected
via a very fast network, with good results.

--

Cheers, Henrik
MPCI at LLNL
IBM Research

------------------------------ ( reply #15) -------------------------------

From: (anonymous) <vu0208@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu>

If you want to do what you have said in your post, you might create a
loosely-coupled loosely-performed-MIMD!! Why? becaz the CM-5 has 2
extra things that you wont have: (1) A fast communication network
rather than yours FDDI/Ethernet/ISDN etc.. (2) Their node is haveing a
dedicated a 22-Mips RISC microprocessor with four vector pipes
providing a total of 128 MFlops peak speed!! (3) They are capable of
playing dual role of the machine at the same time SIM and MIMD.

So I guess by just connecting 32 Sparcstations you wont hit the 129
MFlops performance, however it may be at least 1/4 of 16-node CM-5.

Let's see whta you get after you are done with your peoposed project.

Keep me posted, i will appreciate.

Thanks

------------------------------ ( reply #16) -------------------------------

From: Bob Felderman <feldy@isi.edu>

I suspect not. If you could, then TMC would quickly go out of business.
My guess is that their interconnection network is MUCH better than 
any of your choices.
For one thing, your choices were mostly shared-medium channels. If your
taks requires significant communication, you'll get killed by the
Ethernet or FDDI etc. If your taks are mostly independent, you'll
probably do just fine.


Bob Felderman
USC/Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695
(310) 822-1511 x222
(310) 823-6714 (fax)

feldy@isi.edu

------------------------------ ( reply #17) -------------------------------

From: Ian L. Kaplan <ian@MasPar.COM>

  Whether you can get comparable performance out of an network of 32
Spark Stations that can be obtained form a 32 processor CM-5 depends
on the application.  If you have an application with little or no
communication (some Monte Carlo simulations fall into this catagory)
then the answer is yes.  The more interprocessor communication the
more the CM-5 will win.  They have put a lot of effort into designing
their communication network and it is much faster than anything you
are likely to find connecting workstations.  Another issue is software
overhead in handling communication.  I don't know what TMC has done in
this area (we are one of their competitors, so they don't tell us
these things), but I imagine that they have worked to reduce this
overhead.  This is not as important in SMP Solaris, so it is probably
not as tightly tuned.

  Of course what you should really do is buy a MasPar machine, which
will give you more processing power per dollar than either TMC or Sun
can provide.

                          Ian Kaplan
			  ian@maspar.com

------------------------------ ( reply #18) -------------------------------

From: Bill Maniatty <maniattb@cs.rpi.edu>

I'd be skeptical of getting the same level of performance.  I think the
expense of the networked connections (latency in particular), would force
you to use a larger granularity of task decomposition.  I haven't played with
a CM-5 so I would not really know for sure, but that is my gut reaction.
You might also get a different resource contention pattern because of the
different Operating System/Compiler technology.  I don't think they are
really equivalent, each is appropriate for a different sort of task.

Bill
-- 
|
|	maniattb@cs.rpi.edu - in real life Bill Maniatty
|

------------------------------ ( reply #19) -------------------------------

From: Keith Bierman <Keith.Bierman@Eng.Sun.COM>

the CM-5 has much faster interprocessor communication (fast custom hw,
special sw) you won't come close to their performance for most codes.

Many people use networks of workstations for distributed processing.
They use Express, Strand, PVM and a bevy of research efforts. Wander
through comp.parallel, or a local university library (if they have a
good collection of conference papers and technical reports).

----------------------------- ( reply #20) -------------------------------

From: Paul Whiting <pgw@mel.dit.csiro.au>

G'day,

yes this is possible to do using the macros from Argonne National Lab in the US.

I will forward you another piece of mail about them and how to obtain them.

regards,

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Whiting				| CSIRO - DIT
Computer Scientist			| 723 Swanston Street
High Performance Computing Program      | Carlton 3053, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail: pgw@mel.dit.csiro.au		  Phone: + 61 3 282 2666	

There's no problem a good surf can't fix.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

(****************************** p4 info **********************************)

				      p4


p4 is a library of macros and subroutines developed at Argonne National
Laboratory for programming a variety of parallel machines.  Its predecessor
was the m4-based "Argonne macros" system described in the Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston book "Portable Programs for Parallel Processors, by Lusk, Overbeek, et
al., from which p4 takes its name.  The current p4 system maintains the same
basic computational models described there (monitors for the shared-memory
model, message-passing for the distributed-memory model, and support for
combining the two models) while significantly increasing ease and flexibility
of use.

The current release is version 0.2.  New features added since version 0.1
include: 

  + xdr for communication in a heterogeneous network

  + asynchronous communication of large messages

  + global operations (broadcast, global sum, max, etc.)
  
  + both master-slave and SPMD models for message-passing programs

  + an improved and simplified Fortran interface

  + improved error handling

  + an optional secure server

  + ports to more machines

p4 is intended to be portable, simple to install and use, and efficient.  It
can be used to program networks of workstations, advanced parallel
supercomputers like the Intel Touchstone Delta and the Alliant Campus
HiPPI-based system, and single shared-memory multiprocessors.  It has
currently been installed on the following list of machines: Sequent Symmetry,
Encore Multimax, Alliant FX/8, FX/800, and FX/2800, Cray X/MP, Sun, NeXT, DEC,
Silicon Graphics, and IBM RS6000 workstations, Stardent Titan, BBN GP-1000 and
TC-2000, Intel IPSC/860, Intel Touchstone Delta, and Alliant Campus.  It will
soon be ported to the CM-5 and to the Intel Paragon.  It is not difficult to
port to new systems.

Work in progress also includes use of monitors in Fortran and shared mem~~~~~~~~ory
among multiple processes on multiprocessor workstations.  A useful companion
system is the upshot logging and X-based trace examination facility.

You can obtain the complete distribution of p4 by anonymous ftp from
info.mcs.anl.gov.  Take the file p4.tar.Z from the directory pub/p4.  The
distribution contains all source code, installation instructions, a reference
manual, and a collection of examples in both C and Fortran.  The files
alog.tar.Z and upshot.tar.Z contain logging and display facilities that can be
used with both p4 and other systems.

To ask questions about p4, report bugs, contribute examples, etc., send mail
to p4@mcs.anl.gov.

                                                   Rusty Lusk
                                                   lusk@mcs.anl.gov