Server: Netscape-Commerce/1.12 Date: Tuesday, 26-Nov-96 00:06:26 GMT Last-modified: Monday, 08-Jul-96 19:10:55 GMT Content-length: 4060 Content-type: text/html
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Charles E. Leiserson, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering |
Albert Vezza, Senior Research Scientist, Associate Director, LCS |
Supercomputing Technologies, or SuperTech, is a vertically integrated alliance of several LCS groups. SuperTech's goal is to master all aspects of high-performance computing (including parallel and distributed processing) so that modern hardware technology can be translated into efficient, easy-to-use computing systems. Organized as a cross-section of LCS, SuperTech represents a cooperative effort designed to address the problems of multiscale computing.
To achieve our mission, we are studying machine architecture, language design, parallel-computing theory, numerical analysis, operating system design, and computational science. Facilities include a 128-node Connection Machine CM-5 parallel supercomputer, several Silicon Graphics high-performance graphics workstations, and networks of workstations.
SuperTech is driven in part by the fact that today's computer architect can select from a range of technology options, including cost, performance, reliability, and power. The variety of options will grow even larger within the next decade with the introduction of gigabit networks, lightweight batteries, multichip modules, and optical switches. As a result, we will soon see a diverse set of multiscale computing environments including wireless computers, high-performance PCs, multiprocessor workstations, clusters of distributed workstations, local-area supercomputers, and massively parallel supercomputers that cover a wide range of performance parameters.
This vision of multiscale computing, unfortunately, conflicts with an even more powerful force: software inertia. Existing software systems threaten multiscale computing, since they sanction only a few, well-established computing environments. Each new environment will require massive custom programming to retrofit the standard software in its attempts to unify multiscale computing as users will surely demand through common languages, operating systems, network protocols, and applications.
We cope with these limitations via common architectural and software mechanisms designed to unify the diverse multiscale computing environments and encourage niche markets to flourish. This task requires hardware and software design, the formulation of theoretical foundations, and applications development.
SuperTech cooperates closely with Project SCOUT, an LCS-led consortium designed to promote interaction between computer and computational scientists. SCOUT members include interdisciplinary scientists from MIT, Boston University, and Harvard. MIT participants include scientists, engineers, and mathematicians from the Departments of Physics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mathematics, and Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. It is under SCOUT's auspices that SuperTech hosts such facilities as the Connection Machine CM-5.