First Message-Passing Machines
Early machines such as Caltech Hypercube and first commercial Intel and nCUBE designs used a FIFO on each node to store and forward messages
- computing and message processing equivalenced
- Hardware close to programming Model; synchronous message passing
- Later Replaced by DMA, enabling non-blocking communication
- Buffered by system at destination until needed
Diminishing role of topology in modern machines
- Store and forward routing: topology important
- Introduction of pipelined (worm hole) routing made topology largely irrelevant
- Cost is in node-network interface
- Simplifies programming
64 node n=6 hypercube in Caltech Computer Science Dept.