Norwegian start-up Scali AS claims to have developed a high- performance, low-cost, highly scalable parallel computer system using off-the-shelf technologies and its own implementation of the industry standard message-passing interface it calls Scampi. Scali, which is based in Hvam outside Oslo, connects Axil Computer Inc’s four-processor hyperSparc and UltraSparc boards into various shared-nothing memory configurations – including rings, meshes and a central switch – with up to 32 nodes using Dolphin Interconnect Solutions AS’ SCI scalable coherent interconnect cards running Solaris Unix and Scampi. Scali says it will offer cheaper Intel Pentium II systems running Solaris x86 next year, and ultimately a Windows NT system, though it admits it hasn’t actually implemented Scampi on NT yet. Scali says its 200MHz US UltraSparc system provides 64Mbps bandwidth between nodes and can pass messages between application processes at 8.2 microseconds compared with 107Mbps and 42 microseconds on a Cray T3D and 33Mbps and 58 microseconds on IBM SP2. Basic one-way speed is 2.5 microseconds, or 400,000 messages per second. By comparison, Tandem Computers Inc claims its ServerNet interconnect can pass 11,000 messages a second, with a latency of 90 microseconds (CI No 3,253). Scali says its MPI implementation supports multithreaded programming and simultaneous inter- and intra-node communication. In fact Scali shares its Norsk Data AS roots with Dolphin, where engineers from both companies worked on the company’s Motorola Inc 88000-based superscalar design project. Dolphin span out of Norsk Data in the late 1980s, while Scali founders, including VP operations took themselves off to Advanced Computer Research Institute SARL in 1991 founded by former Compagnie des Machines Bull SA chief executive Jacques Stern in Lyon, France, to create a European massively parallel supercomputer using DEC Alpha RISCs. Signaux SA and Defense Conseil International SA eventually bailed ACRI out in March 1995. Ex-Norsk Data engineers found a home at $500m Norwegian defense contractor Kongsberg SA’s Informasjonkontroll unit where they began work on Scampi. Scali was spun out of Kongsberg towards the end of last year as a majority-owned unit with additional venture funding. It also has offices in Hollis, New Hampshire and Paris, France with a London, UK representative said to be in hand. Scali picked up Dolphin’s interconnect inventor as VP technology and president Trond Bjornstad from Texas Instruments Inc Europe. It has 16 staff and demonstrated Scampi at last year’s Supercomputing show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It has sold one 32-way system to a Norwegian satellite center. A slew of companies are making a bee-line for the MPI market, which enables companies to use a single application operating across multiple systems to process test, result or on-line data streams at high speed. A recent newcomer includes Randolph, Massachusetts-based Network Engines Inc (CI No 3,253).
