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The CM-5 at NAS is a distributed-memory multiprocessor computer. It
has the following features.
- 128 compute nodes; each node consists of a SPARC processor
and four vector processors and can give a theoretical peak
performance of 128 MFLOPS. The theoretical total peak
performance of the 128 node system is about 16 GFLOPS.
- Each node has 32 MegaBytes (MB) of local memory for a total of
4 GigaBytes (GB) of memory.
- The nodes can be organized into a single partition or multiple
partitions. A partition can be as small as 32 nodes or as
large as the entire computer.
- Each partition has a control processor called the Partition Manager
(PM) that governs the allocation of parallel resources, performs
the inherently sequential part of data-parallel programs, and acts
as an interface to external networks. Each partition manager
is a SPARC processor without vector units.
- The CM-5 is connected to the outside world by ethernet
and HiPPI. HiPPI was recently installed (5/94) and is
currently undergoing testing. It should be available
soon for fast file transfer to long term storage.