Machine type: RISC-based distributed-memory multi-processor.
Models: Paragon XP/S, XP/E
Operating systems: OSF/1, SUNMOS.
Connection structure: 2-D mesh (torus).
Compilers: Fortran 77, ADA.
System parameters:
Performance:
Note: 
and 
are obtained from coupling various XP/S systems
up to a number of 6768 processors.
The Paragon is a commercialised offspring of the experimental Touchstone Delta system. The latter machine was built for the Concurrent Supercomputing Consortium at CalTech. The Delta system used i860 processors as computational elements in its nodes but, unlike its predecessor, the iPSC/860, the nodes were not arranged in a hypercube topology but in a 2-D grid (for many physical simulation phenomena, as well as for the solution of linear systems this is a quite natural topology). The Delta system proved to be quite fast for a variety of problems (a speed of 11.9 Gflop/s was reported for an order 20,000 full linear system). The Paragon machine should do better because of the faster i860/XP processor that is used in the nodes. In addition, the i860/XP has processor communication hardware on-chip which makes the communication bandwidth faster.
In November 1993 the Paragon XP/E was introduced. This is an entry-level system with the same characteristics as the XP/S and up to 32 processors. The maximal configuration of the XP/E, the XP/E-28N has 32 nodes of which 28 are compute nodes. The others are used for assisting the routing, I/O, and other operating system tasks.
The Paragons retain compatibility with the former iPSC/860 systems, an Intel hypercube system preceding them. In particular the the transparent parallel Distributed File System can be used in applications migrated from the iPSC/860. The Paragon has its own parallel file system.