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Information transmission is a critical part in multiprocessor arrangments as is the choice of tecnology at each procesor node. In this document we discuss higly symmetric multiprocessor systems distinguished by the following caracteristics:

Array of independent CPU's

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This environment is inspired by the availability of very small, high performance, low cost CPU-cores, which are easy to multiply on one chip.

Standard symmetric multiprocessor aproaches, require complex hardware to manage shared access of several CPU's to shared RAM, which converts main memory in a bottleneck and raises higly complicate sincronization issues partially dealed with in the hardware.

On the other hand, in distributed systems, serveral independent high performance computers are connected together via a high speed LAN, each of them running their own operating system. In either case, the CPU's involved use wide address busses and again highly complex hardware acceleration mecanisms: floating point units, n-level memory caching, memory segmentation and paging, etc. resulting in high per unit costs in both hard- and software.

We hope that this new approach, which combines very larg amounts of "dumb" CPU's in combination with new programming approaches, can compete in price, security and performance with the standard solutions actually deployed.


Georg Lehner May 14, 2004- Magma Soft

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