From: gbyrd@ncsc.org (Gregory T. Byrd)
Subject: Paragon: Intel's new parallel computer
Date: 22 Nov 91 16:10:58 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu (Steve Stevenson)
Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

In article <20436@life.ai.mit.edu>, misha@ai.mit.edu (Mike Bolotski) writes:
 >
 >type: NYT (Copyright 1991 The New York Times)
 >priority: Regular
 >date: 11-17-91 2208EST
 >category: Financial
 >subject: BC INTEL COMPUTER SFCHRON
 >title: INTEL ROLLS OUT NEW SUPERCOMPUTER ON MONDAY
 >author:  DON CLARK
 >text: 
 >
 >        Intel Corp. on Monday will unveil its contender as the
 >world's fastest computer. But the hardware may be upstaged by
 >software that could significantly broaden the use of such powerful
 >systems.
 >       The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company says its new Paragon XP /S
 >system can perform from 5 billion to 300 billion operations per
 >second, for a price ranging from less than $2 million to $55
 >million.
 >       That's a tenfold increase for Intel, and comparable to the CM-5
 >system announced by arch-rival Thinking Machines Corp. of
 >Cambridge, Mass., on October 29.
 >       Such vast power comes by stringing together many standard
 >microprocessor chips, using a technique called massively parallel
 >computing. Paragon, for example, has up to 4,000 processors.
 >       The parallel approach, a key focus of a supercomputer conference
 >that begins today in Albuquerque, N.M., may to be essential to
 >solve daunting problems in climatic change, superconductivity,
 >genetics and medicine. Supercomputers have historically been used
 >mainly for weapons development and intelligence-gathering.
 >       ``We are moving from nukes and spooks to genes and greens,''
 >summed up Gary Smaby, who heads a Minneapolis-based research
 >company that tracks the supercomputer industry.
 >       A House-Senate conference committee is now debating plans to
 >spend more than $2 billion on supercomputer and communications
 >development over five years.
 >       The biggest obstacle to massively parallel computing is
 >software. It is difficult to break up programs so they can be
 >gang-tackled by many electronic brains at once. Many programmers
 >aren't familiar with the custom-made operating systems typically
 >used to control basic functions of parallel machines.
 >       That software gap has set off an industry race to make a
 >simplified internal housekeeping program, able to run on a single
 >microchip or on a thousand such chips working together. The new
 >buzzword for this new software is ``microkernel.''
 >       
 >        (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL ADD FOLLOWS)
 >       
 >
 >       Intel, in a major strategy change, announced that Paragon will
 >use such an operating system being developed by the Open Software
 >Foundation, an industry consortium based in Cambridge, Mass. It is
 >based on a variant of Unix, operating software that runs on most
 >conventional computers.
 >       Justin Rattner, Intel's chief scientist, said the move means
 >that thousands of programs for desktop workstations can be easily
 >converted to Paragon.
 >       ``The architecture is going to be very usable -- that is the big
 >news,'' said Rick Stevens, director of high-performance computing
 >at Argonne National Laboratories, which plans to buy one of the
 >first Paragon machines.
 >       But others have the same idea. Chorus Systems, a French company
 >that has already developed a Unix microkernel, has teamed up with a
 >unit of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. It plans to announce a
 >$1 million investment in Chorus tomorrow.
 >       Thinking Machines -- neck-and-neck with Intel with an estimated
 >$90 million in supercomputer revenue -- has teamed up in a new
 >venture with workstation maker Sun Microsystems and IBM Corp. to
 >develop standard programming techniques for parallel machines.
 >       The fruits of these efforts are many months away, however.
 >Intel, for example, will not ship initial prototypes of the Paragon
 >system until the second quarter of 1992. Thinking Machines says its
 >machines will be available in January.
 >       But the company has claimed some success in moving beyond
 >scientific customers who typically buy supercomputers. Prudential
 >Securities, which already used an Intel machine to help analyze
 >portfolios of mortgage-backed securities, said it will move up to a
 >Paragon machine.
 >       Intel also said it has orders from Boeing, the aircraft maker,
 >Grant Tensor Geophysical, a Houston-based oil-exploration firm,
 >Research Centre Julich in Germany, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
 >and Sandia National Laboratories.
 >       Besides Intel, supercomputer announcements are expected this
 >week from Minneapolis-based Cray Research Inc. and Alliant Computer
 >Systems of Littleton, Mass.
 >       
 >
 > 
 >            *** End of Article *** 
 >-- 
Mike Bolotski          MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
misha@ai.mit.edu       Cambridge, MA 02139     (617) 253-8170