MULTIPLUS: A modular high-performance multiprocessor

Abstract

The MULTIPLUS project which is currently under development at NCE/UFRJ, Brazil, aims at the study of parallel processing problems in MIMD environments. The project includes the development of a parallel shared-memory architecture and a UNIX[+]-like operating system called MULPLIX. The MULTIPLUS architecture uses an inverted n-cube multistage network to interconnect clusters of processing nodes designed around a double-bus system. As a consequence, the architecture is partitionable and modular. It can easily and efficiently support configurations ranging from workstations to powerful parallel supercomputers with up to 2048 processing nodes. The MULPLIX operating system provides MULTIPLUS with an efficient computing environment for parallel scientific applications. MULPLIX uses the concept of thread, implements busy-waiting synchronization primitives very efficiently and carefully considers data locality and scientific processing requirements in the policies adopted for memory management and thread scheduling.