Our studies indicate such a distributed memory architecture is quite appropriate for those codes not requiring extensive load balancing or interprocessor communication. This has allowed many applications to move to departmental scale clusters. If load balancing is an application issue, then a shared memory architecture with very fast memory backplanes is critical to achieving good performance. Because of this current dual memory architecture approach and success, NCSA is committed to providing to users the largest shared memory machines as well as the largest distributed memory machines available. From an applications development point of view, we have observed that most applications optimized for vector processors also become good performers on superscalar workstation level machines.
Industrial users require a wide spectrum of supported, third-party applications.
With this in mind, a further goal is to move toward systems that offer binary compatibility with desktop machines to facilitate development and analysis phases of a research effort to be performed at the user's local site. Return to main document.