Sunnyvale, California-based MasPar Computer Corp has duly launched its massively parallel minisupercomputer (CI No 1,334). The machine comes with from 1,024 and 16,384 processors, and MasPar claims that the most powerful model in the the MP-1 family, the MP 1216, can execute up to 32,000 MIPS and 1,500 MFLOPS, and that even a 1,024 processor MP 1101 weighs in at 1,875 MIPS and 94 MFLOPS – for 117,000. The MP 1216 is $810,000, which works out at less than $30 per MIPS. The machines come with 16Kb memory on each processor, so the aggregate goes from 16Mb to 256Mb. It can can address 4Gb of virtual memory. Running, as reported, under DEC’s Ultrix Unix with a DEC VAXstation 3520 as the front-end for communicating with users and with other systems over Ethernet, it supports all kinds of X Window terminals. The Processor Element Array is a 32-processor chip that includes 40 32-bit registers for each processor. Each processor is in turn a register-based load-store RISC processor designed by the company and rated at 1.8 MIPS. The processors operate on standard integer data sizes of 1, 8, 16, 32, or 64 bits and on floating-point operands of 32 or 64 bits. It is, as reported, a single-instruction multiple-data system, so that every processor in the array is executing the same instruction at any time, but on a different item of data. All processors can also communicate with all others. The program environment for the MP-1 is based on Objectworks for Smalltalk 80 from the Xerox Corp spin-out ParcPlace Systems, which provides a graphical interactive object-oriented development system. Languages bundled with the system are the MasPar Parallel Application Language, which gives direct control over the data-parallel hardware; plus versions of Fortran and C with data-parallel ext ensions. According to Microbytes Daily, one developer implemented an application from a Cray supercomputer on the MP-1 using the tools and then ported it back, increasing the speed it ran on the Cray fivefold.
