Companies, banks included, are reluctant to switch to massively parallel supercomputers because of a lack of industry standards. According to director of the European Centre for Parallelism in Barcelona, CEPBA, Mateo Valero, people are afraid that investment in programming will simply be wasted if new standards emerge. Another problem, he says, lies in the inexactness of the machines’ results. This is due to so many processors running applications at the same time and the numerical methods used for rounding off figures. But, Valero asserted, Some application users are aware that they have to make changes to their algorithms and to their way of programming if they want applications to run quicker. CEPBA itself has Parsys Ltd’s SuperNode CN-1000, Convex Computer Corp’s C-3840, and a Thinking Machines Corp Connection machine. For research purposes, we don’t want to have the fastest machines in the world, but one of each there is, so that when the user comes along, he can develop his own models, Valero maintains. It has been operating for a year now, with the aim of showing researchers both the benefits of massively parallel computers and how to use them. The centre has been involved in a series of projects. It has already developed a C++ compiler for the object-oriented supercomputer, Comandos II, and is now developing compilers for such new high-level supercomputing languages as High Superformance Fortran. The latter is a Eureka project, led by Barcelona Ingenieria del Software SA. It has also signed a deal with Convex to develop compilers for the US company’s multiprocessing systems. In addition, the centre completely designed parallel operating system, Paros, for the European Community SuperNode II project. Paros is used in the Transputer-based SuperNode II Esprit I – machine. It also collaborated with Barcelona-based optical lens manufacturer Indo SA to develop numerical algorithms for transputers in order to improve production of optical lenses; undertook a simulation project for BMW to create more environment-friendly petrol engines with higher performance; is participating in 15 different Esprit and RACE, Research into Advanced Communications in Europe, projects, and is developing supercomputing applications for the European project APPARC – Esprit III.
