PDS: A Scalable-Feasible Parallel Computer Implementing Electronic and Optical Interconnections for 156 TeraOPS Minimum Performance

该项目的主要目标是开发一种先进的MIMD计算机系统的“点设计”，该系统能够达到至少100TeraOps的性能，其技术将在不到十年内肯定变得可行。这种设计将利用自由空间光学技术来产生一维积木(BB)，从而有效地实现一个大型的、几乎完全连接的处理器系统。除了具有可扩展的体系结构外，我们的BB还具有技术可伸缩性，因此，随着光学技术的预期改进，BB中包含的处理器数量可能会大幅增加。提出了完整系统的一种简单的二维结构，其中上述一维BB被扩展到二维。有了现成的技术，全球范围的光互连网络可以被视为由相对较短的塑料条组成的网，处理器卡的接口连接到这些塑料条上。每个处理器卡包含八个通过电子纵横在本地互连的处理器。利用更高速的光学技术，所有八个处理器共享到二维系统的相同光学接口。它的高级体系结构也是可伸缩的，因为它可以直接向前扩展到任何数量的大于2的维度。

The main objective of this project is to develop a "point design" for an advanced MIMD computer system capable of achieving at least 100 TeraOPS performance with technology that will definitely become feasible in less than a decade. This design will take advantage of free-space optical technologies to produce a one-dimensional building block (BB) that implements efficiently a large, almost fully-connected system of processors. In addition to having a scaleable architecture, our BB is also technology scaleable, and therefore the number of contained processors in the BB could increase dramatically with expected improvements in optical technologies. A simple two-dimensional structure is proposed for the complete system, where the aforementioned one-dimensional BB is extended into two dimensions. With readily available technology, the word-wide optical interconnection network can be viewed as a mesh of relatively short plastic bars to which interfaces to processor cards are attached. Each processor card contains eight processors interconnected locally with an electronic crossbar. Taking advantage of higher-speed optical technologies, all eight processors share the same optical interface to the two-dimensional system. Its high-level architecture is also scaleable, because it can be extended straight forwardly for any number of dimensions larger than two.