Article 5367 of comp.parallel: Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!rutgers!gatech!hubcap!fpst From: sund@MasPar.COM (Brenda Sund) Newsgroups: comp.parallel Subject: (News Release) MasPar Announces Second Generation System Keywords: MasPar,MP-2 Message-ID: <1992Oct6.181556.1267@hubcap.clemson.edu> Date: 6 Oct 92 16:39:50 GMT Sender: news@MasPar.COM (USENET News System) Organization: MasPar Computer Corp. Lines: 124 Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu Apparently-To: uunet!comp-parallel MASPAR COMPUTER CORPORATION 10.6.92.539 749 North Mary Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Scott Humphrey (408) 736-3300 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MasPar Announces MP-2 Massively Parallel Computer; 2nd Generation System Offers 5X Performance Boost Sunnyvale, Calif., October 6, 1992 - MasPar Computer Corporation today announced its second generation massively parallel system, the MP-2. The MP-2 delivers up to five times the performance of the first generation MasPar system, the MP-1, yet retains binary compatibility, a unique attribute in the rapidly moving and research-oriented massively parallel processing (MPP) market. The entire portfolio of application software that runs on the MP-1 is available at introduction for the MP-2. "We know from experience that the biggest investment computer users make is in the software they create," said Jeff Kalb, president and CEO of MasPar. "Before MPP systems can truly become a viable alternative for production applications, our customers and software partners need to see the recognition of this fact in our products. With proven performance of up to five times the MP-1, along with binary compatibility, the MasPar MP-2 is ready for industrial strength, production environments." New Price/Performance Standard At Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University, a MasPar beta site, the MP-2 has produced exceptional results and has set a new price/performance standard in high-performance computing. "On compute-intensive application kernels, weUve seen over one GigaFLOPS (32-bit) on our 4,096 processor MP-2," said Dr. John Gustafson, director of Ames Lab. "We are finding the MP-2 delivers an average of four times the performance of a comparably- configured MP-1. The MP-2 has now replaced our MP-1 as the most cost-effective system in our Scalable Computing Facility." GigaFLOPS (one billion Floating Point Operations per Second) is a measure of performance typically associated with scientific and engineering calculations. For comparison, high performance workstations deliver .020-.050 GigaFLOPS, and one GigaFLOPS CRAY supercomputers typically cost over $3 million. The MP-2 model 2204 used at Ames Laboratory has a list price of $530,000. In addition, the MP-2 sets a new level of performance on another important metric, integer operations per second. The MP-2 delivers 68,000 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second), a level unmatched by any other massively parallel system, regardless of price. For comparison, a 386-based PC averages 10 MIPS, making the MP-2 the equivalent of almost 7,000 PCs. "There are more applications emerging for MPP all the time," said Kalb. "We are finding that many of the new ones, such as statistics and biotech, benefit from high integer performance as well as high floating point performance. The MP-2 is in a class by itself for integer performance, and it will be exciting to watch as software developers find new ways to take advantage of this unique capability." World's First R32 x 32S RISC Chip At the heart of the MP-2 is a full custom processor chip - the first with 32, 32-bit RISC processors on one chip. The MasPar "32X32" (32 by 32) RISC CPU chip represents an elegant and powerful use of today's semiconductor technology. Designed to support massively parallel computing, each chip produces 133 MIPS, 12.3 MFLOPS, and has communcations bandwidth of 40 Mbytes/second. Yet each 32 processor chip consumes less than 0.8 watts of power. "Getting this level of performance with under a watt of power consumption enables not only high performance, but also extraordinary reliability and simplicity of installation," said Kalb. "The MP-2 will continue the excellent reliability reputation of the MP-1, which has averaged 8,000 hours mean-time- between-failure (MTBF), which represents one year of normal use." In addition, the MP-2 requires no special environmental conditioning. The 32 x 32 chip is designed in one micron CMOS technology and contains more than one million transistors. The MP-2 is available in five configurations, from 1,024 to 16,384 processors with list prices ranging from $260,000 to $1.6 million. The MP-2 is available immediately. MP-1 Now Priced At $75,000 With the introduction of the MP-2, MasPar also announced a dramatic reduction in the list prices of the MP-1. The entry price for the MP-1 is now $75,000 for a complete system, making it the most powerful and cost-effective entry MPP system available today. This represents a 32 percent cut from the prior list price, and 56 percent less than when the MP-1 was introduced in January, 1990. "This is where our binary compatibility strategy will really pay dividends," said Kalb. "Because our customers can move their code smoothly between the MP-1 and MP-2, the MP-1 now becomes an excellent development system, and with our new pricing, it makes MPP more accessible than ever." "We are delighted with the new MP-1 pricing," said Michael Kelly, president of Intelligenetics Inc. of Mountain View California, which develops and markets biotech applications software for MasPar machines. "As a software developer, a critical factor to our success is the number of installed systems that can run our product. A $75,000 MP-1 system puts us squarely in the range of workstation prices, but with well over ten times the performance on our type of application." MasPar Computer Corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California is a leader in the emerging market for massively parallel processing, a new approach to high performance computing using thousands of processors working in unison. MasPar has shipped over 130 revenue systems since introduction in January 1990, and industry analysts put the company fourth in revenues and fastest growing of the massively parallel processing companies during 1991. MasPar products are used extensively in industry and academia for applications ranging from simulations of automotive crashes to cancer and AIDS research. -- end --