HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cfreese@super.super.org (Craig F. Reese)
Subject: Re: 16-node hypercube
Apparently-To: uunet!comp-parallel
Summary: questions
Organization: Supercomputing Research Center (Bowie, MD)
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 17:50:37 GMT

In article <1992Nov23.125706.8641@hubcap.clemson.edu> black@studsys.mscs.mu.edu (benjamin j black ) writes:
>
>Keywords:speed, speed, and more speed
>
>	16 DSP CPU's (50MFLOPS each)
>	2 MB 20ns SRAM per processor
>	2 GB Disk space (SCSI-2)
>
>	SPACE sub-microkernel OS, Dataparallel C compiler,etc.
>
>	Any questions?
>	black@studsys.mscs.mu.edu
>
As a matter of fact, yes.

    Which DSP?
    How many wait states on the external memory?
    What are the hypercube links?  (i.e. are they C40 comm links
       or something home grown.  If so what is the performance.)
    What is the limit on scalability?
    Is the interconnet reconfigurable to say make a shuffle-exchange,
       ring, mesh, etc...  (i.e. can I recable the thing?)
    Any shared memory among the processors?
    Is the disk space distributed among the processors or from a
       single node/frontend.
    What facilities are there for parallel I/O.
    Is the machine standalone or does it have a frontend.  If
       so what is it?
    What applications have actually been developed, tested, and
       benchmarked?

And lastly...

    From where can I FTP some PostScript technical reports on the
    hardware and software.

Craig

*** The opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect 
*** those of any other land dwelling mammals or my management....

"The problem ain't what we don't know; it's what we know that just ain't so.
Either we take familiar things so much for granted that we never think about 
how they originated, or we "know" too much about them to investigate closely."
-----------------
Craig F. Reese                           Email: cfreese@super.org
Institute for Defense Analyses/
Supercomputing Research Center 
17100 Science Dr.
Bowie, MD  20715-4300
    



Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: zoubeir@snoopy.umd.edu (Noura Zoubeir)
Subject: Needed info on CM-5
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Distribution: usa
Date: 18 Nov 92 18:49:08 GMT


Do you know where I get information on CM-5?
(Architecture, what it can do, available software...)

thanks,

Noura Zoubeir


Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: kumar@moose.cs.umn.edu (Vipin Kumar)
Subject: Re: JPDC Special Issue on Scalability
Apparently-To: comp-parallel@uunet.uu.net
Keywords: scalability, large-scale parallel computers, analysis
Organization: University of Minnesota
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 06:35:52 GMT

In <1992Nov13.125108.20317@hubcap.clemson.edu> "Dennis Gannon" <gannon@moose.cs.indiana.edu> writes:

>Vipin,

>I am shocked.  For your special issue you have called for:

>>The objective of this special issue is to bring together the research
>>done by theoreticians,  architecture designers and application developers
>>on scalability analysis of large-scale parallel systems.

>When are you going to get the picture that an essential key to  progress
>in this area is in Software, i.e. Compilers, the O.S. and Performance Analysis!
>Yet you seem to see their input as not important.  I wish you good luck 
>on getting REAL scalabilty with out help from these people.

>Your friend,
>Dennis Gannon


Dennise,
It was not my intent to exclude scalability issues in software for
large-scale parallel systems.  Thanks for pointing out  this oversight.
I will include it explicitly in the next announcement. 

Vipin

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: gba@bit.ecn.purdue.edu (George Adams)
Subject: Re: CM-2 Performance?
Apparently-To: comp-parallel@uunet.uu.net
Summary: available report on CM-2 performance
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 21:14:21 GMT

A former student of mine and I did an extensive study of CM-2 execution
time for basic operations.  This work includes the relevant tests of
the 76 tests done on the CM-1 by O'Farrell [OFA87] and an additional 42
tests that we designed.  These tests provide execution time information
including the mean, minimum, maximum, and standard deviation, since
timing on the CM-2 must be done through the front end and is subject to
perturbation by other processes running on the front end host.  The
tests cover operations such as:  integer add, subtract, multiply,
divide; floating point add, subtract. multiply, and divide; inner
product; image smoothing (3x3 kernel); and communications of many, many
types.

Our work is summarized in [MyA91].  The work was done in the summer of
1988 at the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science at the
NASA Ames Research Center.  There is also a technical report [MyA88]
that shows everything we did, including complete listings of the test
codes and the performance measurement code.

The technical report is available in hardcopy (113 pages) or postscript
(0.56 MBytes).

Prof. George B. Adams III
Purdue University
1285 Electrical Engineering
W. Lafayette, IN  47907-1285
gba@ecn.purdue.edu

[MyA88] David W. Myers and George B. Adams III,
	``Benchmarking and Performance Analysis of the CM-2,''
	Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science,
	Technical Report Number 88.19, December 1988, 113 pages.

[MyA91] David W. Myers and George B. Adams III,
	``Benchmarking and Performance Analysis of the CM-2,''
	Scientific Applications of the Connection Machine:
	Proceedings of the Conference, 2nd Edition,
	(first edition in 1988), edited by Horst Simon,
	World Scientific Publishing, ISBN 981-02-0928-2, 1991.

[OFA87] William O'Farrell,
	``Report on Instruction Timing for the Connection Machine
	(Model CM-1),'' Syracuse Technical Report 87-1, Syracuse
	University, Syracuse, New York, 1987.

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: chaib@ift.ulaval.ca (B. Chaib-draa)
Subject: Re: Info on Parallelizing Compilers for Distrib
Apparently-To: uunet!comp-parallel
Reply-To: chaib@ift.ulaval.ca
Organization: Dept. Informatique, Universite Laval
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 17:18:52 GMT

Hello everyone!

I'm doing research in parallel databases and parallel production sytems with transputers. If you have any information about these tropics, please email it to me.

Thanks!
---
---------------------------------------
Pr. B. Chaib-draa
Departement Informatique, Fac. Sciences
Universite Laval, Ste-Foy,
Canada, G1k 7P4
email: chaib@ift.ulaval.ca
Fax: (418) 656-2324
---------------------------------------


Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: chunghsu@paul.rutgers.edu (Chung-Hsing Hsu)
Subject: summary: scalability analysis
Keywords: scalability, analysis, summary
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Date: 21 Nov 92 02:14:41 GMT



Two weeks ago I posted a message asking for the references on scalability
analysis. The following is the responses I get.
(I only include the replies which give me the references, and modify them 
in a concise way.) 
Thanks to those who sent me the information.

- Chung-Hsing Hsu

Here are the references.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: picano@ecn.purdue.edu (Silvio Picano)

Vipin Kumar has done quite a bit of impressive work in exactly
what you are looking for.  He recently posted a message in
comp.parallel that I have included below.  He sent me quite a few
of his papers over this past summer.  He may have a survey paper,
or know exactly where to find one.

(ps* Professor Kumar has a survey paper. Please see the following)

-------------------------
From: dbader@eng.umd.edu (David Bader)

Refer to the following textbook.  It uses the PRAM model to focus on
parallel algorithmic issues, and also uses a Work-Time framework to
analyse parallel algorithms.

JaJa, Joseph.  Introduction to Parallel Algorithms.  Addison-Wesley,
	New York, 1992.

------------------------
From: Jan Prins <prins@cs.unc.edu>

One example of such an analysis (rather than a particular technique) is
in the 1991 SPAA paper on the implementation of sorting algorithms for
the CM-2 by Blelloch et al.

------------------------
From: agupta@loon.cs.umn.edu (Anshul Gupta)

@techreport{KUMAR91scale,
       AUTHOR = "Vipin Kumar and Anshul Gupta",
       TITLE ="Analyzing Scalability of Parallel Algorithms and Architectures",
       YEAR = "June 1991",
       NUMBER = "TR-91-18",
       INSTITUTION = "Computer Science Department, University of Minnesota",
       NOTE = "A short version of the paper appears in the
Proceedings of the 1991 International Conference on Supercomputing, Germany,
and as an invited paper in the Proc. of 29th Annual Allerton
Conference on Communuication, Control and Computing, Urbana,IL, October 1991"
}

(ps* This is the survey paper from Prof Kumar.  You can get it by using 
     anonymous ftp to ftp.cs.umn.edu:/users/kumar/survey.ps)

------------------------
From: chihoub@sylvester.siemens.com (Abdelaziz Chihoub)

Prof. Vipin Kumar at university of Minnesota has 
a good report on scalability (you can get in touch 
with him). 

-----------------------
From: Jose Cheng <cheng@inf.enst.fr>

	D.Nussbaum, A.Agarwal: Scalability of Parallel Machines
	Communications ACM, March 1991 (vol.34, no.3)


There is also a special issue on supercomputer performance metrics:

 	Parallel Computing, December 1991 (vol.17, nos.10&11)

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: stuarts@jeeves.ucdavis.edu (Stuart Staniford-Chen)
Subject: How to get at arrays in CM-2 debugger?
Organization: Clemson University
Date: 17 Nov 92 03:41:38 GMT



Sorry to bother people with trivia but I can't find this one in the  
manual.  I'm programming in C* on the CM-2, and using dbx on a Sun front  
end.  I understand (from the manual) how to look at values for a parallel
variable (using CMC_print etc).  However, if I have a parallel array or  
structure:

shape [X][Y][Z]lattice;
int:lattice lat1[4];       or       struct something:lattice lat2;

then how do I look at individual fields of this in the debugger?

Thanks for any help.

Stuart.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stuart Staniford-Chen		:  stuarts@jeeves.ucdavis.edu
Department of Physics		:  NeXT-Mail cheerfully accepted.
UC Davis, CA 95616, USA.	:  regular email is fine too.

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: crivells@tramp.Colorado.EDU (CRIVELLI SILVIA NOEMI)
Subject: traveling salesman problem
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 21:48:57 GMT

Hi,

  I'm looking for recent papers on parallel implementations of
tree search algorithms such as backtracking and branch-and-bound.
I'm specially interested in parallel solutions to the traveling
salesman problem.

  Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance,

--Silvia Crivelli
   crivells@boulder.Colorado.EDU


Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: cpr4k@holmes.acc.Virginia.EDU (Christian P. Roberts)
Subject: Re: PVM & HeNCE
Organization: Academic Computing Center - U.Va.
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 16:44:35 GMT

Regarding the following from Christos Triantafillou
<christos@bohemia.cs.colorado.edu>:
>>There is a rumor that PVM treats a whole parallel system
>>(eg IPSC) like a single parallel node, that is, you can
>>send messages between different IPSC systems but not
>>between Ipsc's nodes. Is that true? 

Are you referring to the Intel hypercube here?  Do you mean that
you are trying to run a hypercube program, where the Intel machine
is a node in PVM?  Then are you asking whether or not you can have
communication between the nodes on the hypercube (which I would 
presume you still would be able to do), or whether you can have
communication between a node of the hypercube and another PVM
node, for example, a Cray?

-- 

Chris Roberts                     ITC/Academic Computing Center
cpr4k@virginia.edu                University of Virginia           
(804) 982-4693                    Charlottesville, Virginia 22903

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: christos@bohemia.cs.colorado.edu (Christos Triantafillou)
Subject: Re: PVM vs. Express
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 23:41:24 GMT

In article <1992Nov13.125101.20219@hubcap.clemson.edu> roy@willow.ccsf writes:
>
>Portability: PVM seems to be just workstation networks, Express is also Intel, Ncube
>Cray, SGI, in fact all the MIMD machines I can think of.
>

According to PVM's users guide (ver 2.3), PVM has been ported to
a variety of machines including IPSC, I860, CRAY, CM2, RS6000, etc.

However, I have recently heard that PVM treats each of these
machines like a single parallel node, that is, you cannot send messages
between two ipsc nodes, for example, but only between two ipsc systems.
Could anyone with PVM experience on these systems comment on that?

>
>PVM seems to be just send and receive and not much else. You can't send a "mixed-bag"
>message with different types - you have to send the floats, ints, chars etc in
>different messages. Also there seems to be a kind of hub-and-spoke system where all 
>

That's not true. You can always send multi-type messages by
successively calling get[type] to get the message buffer filled,
and then actually send your message using snd().

--- Christos


Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: cpr4k@holmes.acc.Virginia.EDU (Christian P. Roberts)
Subject: Re: PVM & HeNCE
Organization: Academic Computing Center - U.Va.
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:09:01 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.034113.14715@colorado.edu>, christos@bohemia.cs.colorado.edu (Christos Triantafillou) writes:
|> In article <1992Nov16.164435.19568@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> cpr4k@holmes.acc.Virginia.EDU (Christian P. Roberts) writes:
|> >
|> >Are you referring to the Intel hypercube here?  Do you mean that
|> >you are trying to run a hypercube program, where the Intel machine
|> >is a node in PVM?  Then are you asking whether or not you can have
|> >communication between the nodes on the hypercube (which I would 
|> >presume you still would be able to do), or whether you can have
|> >communication between a node of the hypercube and another PVM
|> >node, for example, a Cray?
|> >
|> 
|> I am talking about using PVM routines to snd/rcv messages
|> between the nodes on the hypercube, and it turns out, after all
|> the respones I have received, that this is not possible, at least
|> with versions 2.3-2.4.
|> 
|> However, PVM is still useful for running parallel programs
|> in a network of workstations and for exchanging data in a
|> heterogeneous environment.
|> 

Check the posting by Tom Crockett from Icase for the way they handled
this on the i860.  I would think, on the simplest level, you could have
PVM snd/rcv messages handled by the host program, but that the hypercube 
snd/rcv would necessarily be kept to the hypercube-node level.

Has anyone tried this? 

-- 

Chris Roberts                     ITC/Academic Computing Center
cpr4k@virginia.edu                University of Virginia           
(804) 982-4693                    Charlottesville, Virginia 22903

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: Simon.N.Smith@cm.cf.ac.uk (Simon N Smith)
Subject: Re: looking references about parellelism and local networks
Keywords: Help
Organization: University of Wales College of Cardiff, Cardiff, WALES, UK.
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 09:31:21 +0000

ojuarez@mtecv2.mty.itesm.mx (Octavio Juarez Espinosa) writes:
 
|> 
|> I have information about LINDA and PVM, I am interested in other
|> articles.

Octavio, could you post your email address again - I'm trying to send a reply
to you but it's getting bounced back.

Thanks,

Simon

-- 
Simon N. McIntosh-Smith, PhD candidate    |  Email : Simon.N.Smith@cm.cf.ac.uk
Department of Computing Mathematics,      |  Phone : +44 (0)222 874000
University of Wales, College of Cardiff,  |  Fax   : +44 (0)222 666182
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom            |

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: ojuarez@mtecv2.mty.itesm.mx (Octavio Juarez Espinosa)
Subject: looking references about parellelism and local networks
Summary: Help
Keywords: Help
Organization: I.T.E.S.M. Campus Monterrey
Date: 18 Nov 92 03:54:42 GMT




Hi,

I'll appreciate if send me any references about parallelism in local
networks.

I have information about LINDA and PVM, I am interested in other
articles.
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,

Octavio Juarez
``
-- 
Octavio Juarez Espinosa
Gabriel Valerio 1134 
Saltillo, Coahuila    CP 25000
Mexico  email ojuarez@mtecv2.mty.itesm.mx

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: gropp@godzilla.mcs.anl.gov (William Gropp)
Subject: Re: PVM vs. Express
Apparently-To: comp-parallel@uunet.uu.net
Organization: Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, Illinois
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 15:25:37 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.131740.5002@hubcap.clemson.edu> esa@acpub.duke.edu (EMILY ANGERER) writes:
]Actually, PVM 2.3 comes set up for a number of machines, namely
]DECstations, SUN workstations, RS6000's, Sequent Symmetry, Cray, Intel
]iPSC/860 and /2, CM2, Alliant FX/8, and the Stardent Titan.  It also
]provides a generic makefile that can be used for other UNIX based
]machines if you care to take the time to make any minor adjustments
]necessary.
]
I'd like to correct this.  PVM 2.3 and 2.4 do NOT run on the iPSC/860, iPSC/2 
or CM-2.  They DO run on the hosts of these machines, which is an entirely
different matter.  Since PVM provides a SPMD/MIMD model, it is highly 
unlikely that it will ever run "on" a CM-2.  Saying that it runs on these
machines is highly misleading at best.

See <pvddir>/doc/FAQ for the 2.4.1 version; this file acknowledges that
PVM doesn't actually run on these machines.  It does however confuse 
implementation restrictions with semantic restrictions; for a counter-example,
see P4 or Express.

Bill Gropp


Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: don@ohm.york.ac.uk (Don Goodeve)
Subject: PVM availability...
Organization: Electronics Department, University of York, UK
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 14:02:52 GMT

I Just caught the discussion on PVM, to be used as a communications
harness for a set of workstations. I am interested in playing with
some distributed applications over a set of workstations, hopefully
without going down to socket level to do it. It sounds like PVM will
provide all that is basically needed.

The hardware that is available is a network of NeXT workstations.
Are there any tools for booting parallel applications within PVM?

Any knowledge about PD systems (PVM or other) that would help in
this quest would be of interest.

Cheers
	Don

don@ohm.york.ac.uk

-- 
 ---------------------------------------------
| Don --- Well why not? Someone has got to be!|
 ---------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: ohnielse@fysik.uni-c.dk (Ole Holm Nielsen)
Subject: Re: How to get at arrays in CM-2 debugger?
Reply-To: ohnielse@fysik.uni-c.dk
Organization: UNI-C, Danish Computer Center for Research and Education
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 10:32:23 GMT

In article 15040@hubcap.clemson.edu, stuarts@jeeves.ucdavis.edu (Stuart Staniford-Chen) writes:
>
>
>Sorry to bother people with trivia but I can't find this one in the  
>manual.  I'm programming in C* on the CM-2, and using dbx on a Sun front  
>end.  I understand (from the manual) how to look at values for a parallel
>variable (using CMC_print etc).  However, if I have a parallel array or  
>structure:
>
>shape [X][Y][Z]lattice;
>int:lattice lat1[4];       or       struct something:lattice lat2;
>
>then how do I look at individual fields of this in the debugger?

Why don't you use PRISM, the CM source level debugger ???

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: shiraz!ian@ohm.york.ac.uk (I Stephenson)
Subject: CM-2 Performance?
Organization: Electronics Department, University of York, UK
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 10:48:33 GMT

I've been doing some development work on a CM-2. I've got my software to work  
fine, but am unsure as to how efficient my impementation is, compared to other  
platforms I've run it on.

The problem is that all the performance figures I've seen for the CM are in  
GFlops. This is all very well but my code is stricly integer. Given that the  
CM-2 has dedicated FP units, this tells me very little about the performance I  
should be expecting.

Has anyone got a MIPS rating for the machine, produced using integer code? I  
appreciate the limitations of such a metric, but it may give me a rough idea of  
whether I'm getting things about right, or missing by a mile! Any other  
comments as to the integer performance would be appreciated.

Thanks
Ian Stephenson
Adaptive Systems Engineering
Dept of Electronics
University of York

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: isc20210@nusunix1.nus.sg (BU SEE TIANG)
Subject: Thanks for those that have help me on Concurrent Programming
Apparently-To: uunet!comp-parallel
Organization: National University of Singapore
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 08:57:46 GMT

	Thanks to all those who have help me one way or another is helping 
me out on the topic on Concurrent Programming. Your suggestions have been 
of much help to me. I have read through some of the book your all have
suggested and find them very helpful in writting my report. Thanks a lot
and have a nice day.

Bu See Tiang
 


Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: Randy Osborne <osborne@merl.COM>
Subject: Re: Summary: General Purpose Optimistic Parallel Programming
Apparently-To: uunet!comp-parallel
Organization: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 15:26:19 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.145229.21093@hubcap.clemson.edu> A.Back@cen.ex.ac.uk writes:
>This is a summary of the responses to my recent request for
>information:
>
>>
>> I am doing research on "general purpose optimistic parallel programming",
>> and would like to hear about any related research.
>>
>
>The responses I recieved pointed to the following research efforts:

Here's a few more references:

R. Osborne, ``Speculative Computation in Multilisp'', in T. Ito and R. Halstead,
editors, Parallel Lisp: Languages and Systems --- Proceedings of U.S./Japan
Workshop on Parallel Lisp, Sendai, Japan, June 5-8, 1989, Lecture Notes in 
Computer Science, Number 441, Springer-Verlag, July 1990, p. 103-137

R. Osborne, ``Speculative Computation in Multilisp: An Overview'', ACM Conference
on Lisp and Functional Programming, 1990, p. 198-208

R. Osborne, ``Speculative Computation in Multilisp'', Technical Report 464,
M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science, November 1989


Randy Osborne
osborne@merl.com

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: wmitchel@fergie.dnet.ge.com (Bill Mitchell)
Subject: OO on parallel computers
Reply-To: wmitchell@atl.ge.com
Organization: GE Advanced Technology Labs
Date: 20 Nov 1992 15:05:00 GMT

A friend is interested in learning about Object Oriented techniques
on parallel computers.  Please post or email references.  Brief descriptions
of on-going work is also of interest.

Thank you.

-- 
 -- Bill

William F. Mitchell           |  wmitchell@atl.ge.com
GE Advanced Technology Labs   |  na.mitchell@na-net.ornl.gov

Just the facts -- no opinion disclaimer necessary.

Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: shiraz!ian@ohm.york.ac.uk (I Stephenson)
Subject: Re: CM-2 Performance?
Organization: Electronics Department, University of York, UK
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 11:04:04 GMT

My email address seems to have been scrambled when I posted this request. Some  
replies have got through to me, but some may have been lost. Could you please  
send any comments to

ian@ohm.york.ac.uk

I'll post any usefull comments that I get.

Thanks
Ian Stephenson
Adaptive Systems Engineering
University of York

Newsgroups: comp.parallel