The supercomputer world has converged on Minneapolis, Minnesota for this week’s Supercomputer 92 show, where observers say that while the conference may lack the hardware launches that dominated last year’s show, companies will announce more software running on their systems as supercomputers try to move into the mainstream. The introductions last year of massively parallel machines by the likes of Intel Corp, Thinking Machines Corp opened up the parallel market and led to forecasts that they would eventually replace the vector machines first developed by Seymour Cray, who did his pioneering work at the then Control Data Corp before moving on to found Cray Research Inc and then Cray Computer Corp.
Chip away
But just as the microprocessor and open software standards are gnawing away at the foundations of the mainframe market, so massively parallel machines are beginning to chip away at the monolithic vector machines – once the parallel software catches up with the hardware. The focus is moving from the big hardware and into the software, a spokeswoman for nCube Inc, Foster City, California told Reuter. Many companies are making software announcements at the Supercomputing ’92: nCube reports that off-the-shelf software packages will be available on its massively parallel systems for applications ranging from molecular modelling to design pharmaceuticals and for oil exploration. Intel has a pact with Fluent Inc, developer of software used by aerospace, automotive and chemical firms, and has also co-developed a prototype program called LS-DYNA3D to run on its Paragon XP/S supercomputer. LS-DYNA3D, created by Livermore Software, is used for three-dimensional analysis. Cray Research is showing parts of its first massively parallel computer, the T3D, specifically the basic board, which will not be available until next year. This show is going to be the noisiest or the most interesting ever because the technologies are in transition, Cray said. And IBM Corp is finally ready to take the wraps off its highly parallel processing system it is developing.
