HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTERS — A STATUS REPORT

摘要

Some years ago the supercomputer landscape changed dramatically: the supremacy of vector processor-based systems had to give way to machines built from Commodity Of-The-Shelf (COTS) products that promised to deliver a better price-performance ratio. In addition cheap Beowulf clusters emerged and are massively employed in laboratories all over the world. We discuss some reasons for this change and also address questions like: Is there still room for computer architecture research? Is there still value in large systems as built in the ASCI initiative in the USA as opposed to clusters? We will review the present status of the supercomputer field and comment on the (rather limited) architectural range that is offered today. Furthermore, we will discuss some of the latest developments in the field and how they may impact on the machines to come.