| Machine type | RISC-based distributed-memory multi-processor |
|---|---|
| Models | AVX series 2 |
| Operating system | Trollius (Unix-like variant with extentions) |
| Connection structure | Crossbar |
| Compilers | Fortran, C, C++, Linda |
System parameters:
| Model | AVX series 2 |
|---|---|
| Clock cycle | 25 ns |
| Theor. peak performance | |
| Per proc. (64-bit) | 60 Mflop/s |
| Maximal (64-bit) | 3.84 Gflop/s |
| Main memory | <=1,280 MB |
| Memory/node | <=20 MB |
| Memory bandwidth | 5 GB/s |
| Communication bandwidth | <=10 MB/s |
| No. of processors | 8-64 |
Remarks:
The AVX system is reminiscent to the Meiko i860 CS (see 3.4.12) in that the system can be configured with and without Intel i860 processors in the processing nodes while each node always contains a T805 transputer which is responsible for inter-node communication. The i860s are used for computational intensive tasks. Instead of computational nodes with or without i860s special function nodes, like SCSI interface nodes or graphics nodes may be installed to make the machine more balanced with respect to I/O requirements or graphics performance.
Up to 8 simultaneous users can be allocated on the (virtual) machine leaving the users the freedom to define the topology for their machine in software.
Third party programming environments available are Perihelion's Helios which should be able to attract users which migrate from transputer based machines and Parasoft's Express which runs on many DM-MIMD platforms.
Measured Performances: Alex is fairly new in the field, so no measured performance figures were available at the moment of writing.