Overview of Recent Supercomputers

Aad J. van der Steen

and

Jack J. Dongarra

Abstract:

In this report we give an overview of parallel and vector computers which are currently available or will become available within a short time frame from vendors; no attempt is made to list all machines that are still in the research phase. The machines are described according to their architectural class. Shared and distributed memory SIMD and MIMD machines are discerned. The information about each machine is kept as compact as possible. Moreover, no attempt is made to quote prices as these are often even more elusive than the performance of a system.

This document reflects the technical state of the supercomputer arena as accurately as possible. However, the authors nor their employers take any responsibility for errors or mistakes in this document. We encourage anyone who has comments or remarks on the contents to inform us, so we can improve this work.

• Contents
• Introduction and account
• The Main Architectural Classes
  • Shared-memory SIMD machines
  • Distributed-memory SIMD machines
  • Shared-memory MIMD machines
  • Distributed-memory MIMD machines
• Recount of the (almost) available systems
  • Shared-memory SIMD systems
    • The Hitachi S3600 series.
  • Distributed-memory SIMD systems
    • The Alenia Quadrics.
    • The Cambridge Parallel Processing Gamma II Plus.
  • Shared-memory MIMD systems
    • The Cray Research Inc. Cray J90-series, T90 series.
    • The Digital Equipment Corp. AlphaServer.
    • The Hitachi S3800 series.
    • The NEC SX-4.
    • The Sun E1000 Starfire.
    • The Tera MTA
  • Distributed-memory MIMD systems
    • The Avalon A12.
    • The C-DAC PARAM OpenFrame system.
    • The Cray Research Inc. T3E.
    • The Fujitsu AP3000.
    • The Fujitsu VPP700 series.
    • The Hitachi SR2201 system.
    • The HP/Convex Exemplar SPP-2000.
    • The IBM 9076 SP2.
    • The Meiko Computing Surface 2.
    • The nCUBE 2S.
    • The NEC Cenju-3.
    • The Parsytec CC series.
    • The Silicon Graphics Origin series.
• Systems Disappeared from the List
• Systems under development
• References
• Acknowledgments
• About this document ...