In addition to Active Memory Technology Ltd’s 8-bit co-processor upgrade to its massively parallel DAP Distributed Array Processor announced the other day, (CI No 1,411), the Reading, Berkshire firm also says that its planned Gallium Arsenide processor technology will be implemented on the DAP by early next year. The development work is being carried out with $3m of funding that Active Memory received from the US Department of Defense. Meanwhile the new four-board upgrade set adds an 8-bit floating point co-processor to each of the proprietary single-cycle 1-bit CPUs in a DAP. The co-processor combines an arithmetic logic unit with a 32-bit shift register and accumulator, and on-chip operand RAM. Attached to each of the UK-designed parts is a new micro-sequencer controller. DAP chips are fabricated by NCR in the US. The new machine is being offered in two models, the DAP/CP8 510C, with 1,024 processor combinations and the 610C with a maximum of 4,096. They are rated at 5,000 MIPS, 140 MFLOPS and 20,000 MIPS, 560 MFLOPS respectively. In the UK the 510C is priced from UKP87,000, the 610C comes in at around UKP300,000. The new systems are also available as board upgrades from existing 510 and 610 models, though software will have to be recompiled to move to the new models. Applications for DAPs are coded in an extended form of Fortran, a new version of which – Fortran Plus Enhanced, including a new compiler – is now available from AMT. It relieves the programmer from having to work to a specific number of processors – the compiler works it out automatically. Each DAP is front-ended by Sun Microsystems workstations or DEC VAXes, and are based on Single Instruction Multiple Data technology, in which each processor performs the same task. Active Memory reckons to have sold around 75 DAPs since 1987, the majority in the US and UK, however while defence and industrial markets in the US have been eager to pick up on the technology, in the UK the company has had little success in selling into anywhere but the academic sector. Competing in the same Single Instruction Multiple Data market are Thinking Machines Corp with around 50 installations, and Maspar Computer which has a handful of sites for its recently announced MP-1 (CI No 1,334). Competing technology in the massively parallel system marketplace are Multiple Instruction Multiple Data machines from the likes of Meiko Scientific, in which the processors perform separate bits of the same task, but need message-passing facilities within the processor block to ensure that each is doing what the another requires. In the future, Active Memory plans to increase the number of processors the DAP can handle, and the long-term intention is to split the compute and communications processes across separate units. Active Memory says that Apple Computer Inc is using one of its DAPs in the development of speech and text recognition systems at its research labs, (CI No 1,411).
