Minneapolis-based Network Systems Corp has announced development plans for a HIPPI high performance parallel interface to Intel Corp’s iWrap parallel supercomputer. The parallel interface is being developed under contract to Carnegie Mellon University, as part of its involvement in a Gigabit-wide area network project known as Nectar. The HIPPI interface will enable an iWrap array to access to standard HIPPI data channels, thereby connecting iWrap machines to IBM Corp, Crays Research Inc and other systems that have conforming data encapsulation protocols. Network Systems’ Ken Drewlo reckons the new interface will be a step closer to enabling all proprietary supercomputers to communicate with each other. The goal of the Nectar project is to design and build a high bandwidth, low latency network for interconnecting heterogenous systems for high performance distributed processing. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is one of the five test sites that has been chosen by the US Centre for Nation Research Initiatives, and the university’s areas of focus are parallel computing, network-based multi computers and very large scale operating systems.
