WWW Status Report - The FLASH Project

The design of MAGIC is in its final stages. MAGIC, the chip for cooordinating the processors of a FLASH system, is by far the largest part of the FLASH hardware design. The arrangement of the MAGIC components on the chip is shown here; actual die size is 16mm x 16mm. The FLASH team will soon submit the design to LSI Logic for manufacturing, aiming to receive the finished product by early 1997.

The FLASH hardware team has also created and executed a set of diagnostic tests for MAGIC. These diagnostics include tests using accurate hardware models of the processor and network that will be used along with MAGIC in the FLASH system. To assist the diagnostics effort, the FLASH team has developed new analysis tools. These tools can determine how completely diagnostic tests exercise a large hardware design, and they can also recommend additional tests.

Additionally, the Hive group, developing the operating system for FLASH, and the SUIF group, developing compiler tools for parallel computers, are involved in significant technology transfer:

SimOS, the Hive group's powerful computer system simulator, is being prepared for a general release. SimOS can accurately predict the moment-to-moment behavior of computer system designs; the example graph shows an analysis of SimOS data that shows where time is being spent in the execution of a particular program on the FLASH design. Such analyses allow designers to predict the performance of a system and pinpoint trouble spots in the design.

The SUIF team has already released their compiler and held a workshop to discuss its use. This compiler is unique in its ability to automatically prepare code to run on a parallel computer, producing programs that run as fast as or faster than code that has been laboriously modified by hand.

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WWW Status Report continued: Project summary, goals, and information

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