Meiko Scientific
Encyclopedia
Meiko Scientific Ltd. was a British
supercomputer
company based in Bristol
, founded by members of the design team working on the INMOS transputer
microprocessor
.
management suggested the release of the transputer be delayed, Miles Chesney, David Alden, Eric Barton, Roy Bottomley, James Cownie and Gerry Talbot resigned and formed Meiko (Japanese
for "well-engineered") to start work on massively parallel
machines based on the processor. Nine weeks later they demonstrated a transputer system based on experimental 16 bit transputers at the SIGGRAPH
in San Francisco in July 1985. In 1986 a system based on 32 bit T414 transputers was launched as the Meiko Computing Surface. By 1990, Meiko had sold more than 300 systems and grown to 125 employees. In 1993, Meiko launched the second-generation Meiko CS-2 system, but Meiko ran into financial difficulties in the mid-1990s. The Meiko technical team and technology was transferred to a joint venture company called Quadrics Supercomputers World Ltd.
(QSW), formed by Alenia Spazio
of Italy
in mid-1996. At Quadrics, the CS-2 interconnect technology was developed into QsNet
. As of 2008, a vestigial Meiko website still exists.
supercomputer
. The system was based on the INMOS
transputer microprocessor
, later also using SPARC
and Intel i860
processors.
The Computing Surface architecture comprised multiple boards containing transputers connected together by their communications links via Meiko-designed link switch chips. A variety of different boards were produced with different transputer variants, RAM capacities and peripherals.
The initial software environments provided for the Computing Surface was OPS (Occam Programming System), Meiko's version of INMOS's D700 Transputer Development System. This was soon superseded by a multi-user
version, MultiOPS. Later, Meiko introduced M²VCS (Meiko Multiple Virtual Computing Surfaces), a multi-user resource management system which allowed the processors of a Computing Surface to be partitioned into several domains of different sizes. These domains were allocated by M²VCS to individual users, thus allowing several simultaneous users access to their own virtual Computing Surfaces. M²VCS was used in conjunction with either OPS or MeikOS, a Unix-like
single-processor operating system
.
In 1988, Meiko launched the In-Sun Computing Surface, which repackaged the Computing Surface into VMEbus
boards (designated the MK200 series) suitable for installation in larger Sun-3
or Sun-4
systems. The Sun acted as "front-end" host system for managing the transputers, running development tools and providing mass storage. A version of M²VCS running as a SunOS
daemon
called SVCS (Sun Virtual Computing Surfaces) provided access between the transputer network and the Sun host.
As the performance of the transputer became less competitive towards the end of the 1980s (the follow-on T9000 transputer being beset with delays) Meiko added the ability to supplement the transputers with Intel i860 processors. Each i860 board (MK086 or MK096) contained two i860s with up to 32 MB of RAM each, and two T800s providing inter-processor communication. Sometimes known as the Concerto or simply the i860 Computing Surface, these systems had limited success.
Meiko also produced a SPARC processor board, the MK083, which allowed the integration of the SunOS
operating system into the Computing Surface architecture, similarly to the In-Sun Computing Surface. These were usually used as front-end host processors for transputer or i860 Computing Surfaces. SVCS, or an improved version, called simply VCS was used to manage the transputer resources. Computing Surface configurations with multiple MK083 boards were also possible.
A major drawback of the Computing Surface architecture was poor I/O
bandwidth
for general data shuffling. Although aggregate bandwidth for special case data shuffling could be very high, the general case has very poor performance relative to the compute bandwidth. This made the Meiko Computing Surface uneconomic for many applications.
transputer operating system
developed for the Computing Surface during the late 1980s.
MeikOS was derived from an early version of MINIX
, extensively modified for the Computing Surface architecture. Unlike HeliOS
, another Unix-like transputer operating system, MeikOS was essentially a single-processor operating system with a distributed filesystem. MeikOS was used in conjunction with the M²VCS (Meiko Multiple Virtual Computing Surfaces) resource management software which partitioned the processors of a Computing Surface into domains, managed user access to these domains, and provided inter-domain communication.
MeikOS had "diskless" and "fileserver" variants, the former running on the seat processor of an M²VCS domain, providing a command line user interface for a particular user; the latter running on processors with attached SCSI
hard disks, providing a remote file service (called SFS, Surface File System) to instances of diskless MeikOS. The two communicated via M²VCS.
MeikOS was made obsolete by the introduction of the In-Sun Computing Surface and the Meiko MK083 SPARC
processor board, which allowed SunOS
and SVCS (Sun Virtual Computing Surfaces, later developed as VCS) to take over the roles of MeikOS and M²VCS respectively. The last MeikOS release was MeikOS 3.06, in early 1991.
The CS-2 was an all-new modular architecture based around SuperSPARC
or hyperSPARC
processors and, optionally, Fujitsu
μVP vector processor
s. These implemented an instruction set similar to the Fujitsu VP2000
vector supercomputer and had a nominal performance of 200 megaflops on double precision
arithmetic and double that on single precision. The SuperSPARC processors ran at 40 MHz initially, later increased to 50 MHz. Subsequently, hyperSPARC processors were introduced at 66, 90 or 100 MHz. The CS-2 was intended to scale up to 1024 processors. The largest CS-2 system built was a 224-processor system installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
http://www.top500.org/system/1607.
The CS-2 ran a customized version of the Solaris operating system
, initially Solaris 2.1, later 2.3 and 2.5.1.
" network implemented in custom silicon. This project, codenamed Elan-Elite, was started due to the massive delays in the T9000 Transputer from Inmos
.
This comprised two devices, code-named Elan (adapter) and Elite (switch). Each processing element included an Elan chip, a communications co-processor based on the SPARC
architecture, accessed via a Sun MBus cache coherent
interface and providing two 50MB/s bi-directional links. The Elite chip was an 8-way link crossbar switch
, used to form the packet-switched network. After the Meiko technology was acquired by Quadrics
, the Elan/Elite interconnect technology was developed into QsNet
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
company based in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, founded by members of the design team working on the INMOS transputer
INMOS transputer
The transputer was a pioneering microprocessor architecture of the 1980s, featuring integrated memory and serial communication links, intended for parallel computing. It was designed and produced by Inmos, a British semiconductor company based in Bristol....
microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
.
History
In 1985, when INMOSINMOS
Inmos Limited was a British semiconductor company, founded by Iann Barron, with both the head office and the design office at Aztec West in Bristol, it was incorporated in November 1978.- Products :...
management suggested the release of the transputer be delayed, Miles Chesney, David Alden, Eric Barton, Roy Bottomley, James Cownie and Gerry Talbot resigned and formed Meiko (Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
for "well-engineered") to start work on massively parallel
Massively parallel
Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life sciences, medical diagnostics, and other fields.A massively parallel computer is a distributed memory computer system which consists of many individual nodes, each of which is essentially an independent computer in itself,...
machines based on the processor. Nine weeks later they demonstrated a transputer system based on experimental 16 bit transputers at the SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...
in San Francisco in July 1985. In 1986 a system based on 32 bit T414 transputers was launched as the Meiko Computing Surface. By 1990, Meiko had sold more than 300 systems and grown to 125 employees. In 1993, Meiko launched the second-generation Meiko CS-2 system, but Meiko ran into financial difficulties in the mid-1990s. The Meiko technical team and technology was transferred to a joint venture company called Quadrics Supercomputers World Ltd.
Quadrics
Quadrics was a supercomputer company formed in 1996 as a joint venture between Alenia Spazio and the technical team from Meiko Scientific. They produced hardware and software for clustering commodity computer systems into massively parallel systems. Their highpoint was in June 2003 when six out of...
(QSW), formed by Alenia Spazio
Thales Alenia Space
Thales Alenia Space is an aerospace company born after the Thales Group bought the participation of Alcatel in the two joint-ventures between Alcatel and Finmeccanica, Alcatel Alenia Space and Telespazio.-History:...
of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in mid-1996. At Quadrics, the CS-2 interconnect technology was developed into QsNet
QsNet
QsNet is a high speed interconnect designed by Quadrics used in HPC clusters, particularly Linux Beowulf Clusters. Although it can be used with TCP/IP; like SCI, Myrinet and Infiniband it is usually used with a communication API such as MPI or SHMEM called from a parallel program.The interconnect...
. As of 2008, a vestigial Meiko website still exists.
Computing Surface
The Meiko Computing Surface (sometimes retrospectively referred to as the CS-1) was a massively parallelMassively parallel
Massively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life sciences, medical diagnostics, and other fields.A massively parallel computer is a distributed memory computer system which consists of many individual nodes, each of which is essentially an independent computer in itself,...
supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
. The system was based on the INMOS
INMOS
Inmos Limited was a British semiconductor company, founded by Iann Barron, with both the head office and the design office at Aztec West in Bristol, it was incorporated in November 1978.- Products :...
transputer microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, later also using SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
and Intel i860
Intel i860
The Intel i860 was a RISC microprocessor from Intel, first released in 1989. The i860 was one of Intel's first attempts at an entirely new, high-end instruction set since the failed Intel i432 from the 1980s...
processors.
The Computing Surface architecture comprised multiple boards containing transputers connected together by their communications links via Meiko-designed link switch chips. A variety of different boards were produced with different transputer variants, RAM capacities and peripherals.
The initial software environments provided for the Computing Surface was OPS (Occam Programming System), Meiko's version of INMOS's D700 Transputer Development System. This was soon superseded by a multi-user
Multi-user
Multi-user is a term that defines an operating system or application software that allows concurrent access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leaving the...
version, MultiOPS. Later, Meiko introduced M²VCS (Meiko Multiple Virtual Computing Surfaces), a multi-user resource management system which allowed the processors of a Computing Surface to be partitioned into several domains of different sizes. These domains were allocated by M²VCS to individual users, thus allowing several simultaneous users access to their own virtual Computing Surfaces. M²VCS was used in conjunction with either OPS or MeikOS, a Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
single-processor operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
.
In 1988, Meiko launched the In-Sun Computing Surface, which repackaged the Computing Surface into VMEbus
VMEbus
VMEbus is a computer bus standard, originally developed for the Motorola 68000 line of CPUs, but later widely used for many applications and standardized by the IEC as ANSI/IEEE 1014-1987. It is physically based on Eurocard sizes, mechanicals and connectors , but uses its own signalling system,...
boards (designated the MK200 series) suitable for installation in larger Sun-3
Sun-3
Sun-3 was the name given to a series of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9th, 1985. The Sun-3 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 microprocessor, in combination with the...
or Sun-4
Sun-4
Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RISC architecture in place of the 68k family...
systems. The Sun acted as "front-end" host system for managing the transputers, running development tools and providing mass storage. A version of M²VCS running as a SunOS
SunOS
SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS...
daemon
Daemon (computer software)
In Unix and other multitasking computer operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user...
called SVCS (Sun Virtual Computing Surfaces) provided access between the transputer network and the Sun host.
As the performance of the transputer became less competitive towards the end of the 1980s (the follow-on T9000 transputer being beset with delays) Meiko added the ability to supplement the transputers with Intel i860 processors. Each i860 board (MK086 or MK096) contained two i860s with up to 32 MB of RAM each, and two T800s providing inter-processor communication. Sometimes known as the Concerto or simply the i860 Computing Surface, these systems had limited success.
Meiko also produced a SPARC processor board, the MK083, which allowed the integration of the SunOS
SunOS
SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS...
operating system into the Computing Surface architecture, similarly to the In-Sun Computing Surface. These were usually used as front-end host processors for transputer or i860 Computing Surfaces. SVCS, or an improved version, called simply VCS was used to manage the transputer resources. Computing Surface configurations with multiple MK083 boards were also possible.
A major drawback of the Computing Surface architecture was poor I/O
Input/output
In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)
In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...
for general data shuffling. Although aggregate bandwidth for special case data shuffling could be very high, the general case has very poor performance relative to the compute bandwidth. This made the Meiko Computing Surface uneconomic for many applications.
MeikOS
MeikOS (also written as Meikos or MEiKOS) was a Unix-likeUnix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
transputer operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
developed for the Computing Surface during the late 1980s.
MeikOS was derived from an early version of MINIX
Minix
MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel....
, extensively modified for the Computing Surface architecture. Unlike HeliOS
HeliOS
HeliOS was a Unix-like operating system for parallel computers developed and sold by Perihelion Software. It was most commonly used on various Transputer systems, but also supported other architectures. The system provided a micro-kernel that implemented a distributed name space and messaging...
, another Unix-like transputer operating system, MeikOS was essentially a single-processor operating system with a distributed filesystem. MeikOS was used in conjunction with the M²VCS (Meiko Multiple Virtual Computing Surfaces) resource management software which partitioned the processors of a Computing Surface into domains, managed user access to these domains, and provided inter-domain communication.
MeikOS had "diskless" and "fileserver" variants, the former running on the seat processor of an M²VCS domain, providing a command line user interface for a particular user; the latter running on processors with attached SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
hard disks, providing a remote file service (called SFS, Surface File System) to instances of diskless MeikOS. The two communicated via M²VCS.
MeikOS was made obsolete by the introduction of the In-Sun Computing Surface and the Meiko MK083 SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
processor board, which allowed SunOS
SunOS
SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS...
and SVCS (Sun Virtual Computing Surfaces, later developed as VCS) to take over the roles of MeikOS and M²VCS respectively. The last MeikOS release was MeikOS 3.06, in early 1991.
CS-2
The CS-2 was launched in 1993 and was Meiko's second-generation system architecture, superseding the earlier Computing Surface.The CS-2 was an all-new modular architecture based around SuperSPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
or hyperSPARC
HyperSPARC
The hyperSPARC, code-named "Pinnacle", is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC Version 8 instruction set architecture developed by Ross Technology for Cypress Semiconductor....
processors and, optionally, Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
μVP vector processor
Vector processor
A vector processor, or array processor, is a central processing unit that implements an instruction set containing instructions that operate on one-dimensional arrays of data called vectors. This is in contrast to a scalar processor, whose instructions operate on single data items...
s. These implemented an instruction set similar to the Fujitsu VP2000
Fujitsu VP2000
The VP2000 were the second series of vector supercomputers from Fujitsu. Announced in December 1988, they replaced Fujitsu's earlier FACOM VP Model E Series...
vector supercomputer and had a nominal performance of 200 megaflops on double precision
Double precision
In computing, double precision is a computer number format that occupies two adjacent storage locations in computer memory. A double-precision number, sometimes simply called a double, may be defined to be an integer, fixed point, or floating point .Modern computers with 32-bit storage locations...
arithmetic and double that on single precision. The SuperSPARC processors ran at 40 MHz initially, later increased to 50 MHz. Subsequently, hyperSPARC processors were introduced at 66, 90 or 100 MHz. The CS-2 was intended to scale up to 1024 processors. The largest CS-2 system built was a 224-processor system installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...
http://www.top500.org/system/1607.
The CS-2 ran a customized version of the Solaris operating system
Solaris Operating System
Solaris is a Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It superseded their earlier SunOS in 1993. Oracle Solaris, as it is now known, has been owned by Oracle Corporation since Oracle's acquisition of Sun in January 2010....
, initially Solaris 2.1, later 2.3 and 2.5.1.
Elan-Elite
The processors in a CS-2 were connected by a Meiko-designed multi-stage packet-switched "fat treeFat tree
The fat tree network, invented by Charles E. Leiserson of MIT, is a universal network for provably efficient communication. Unlike an ordinary computer scientist's notion of a tree, which has "skinny" links all over, the links in a fat-tree become "fatter" as one moves up the tree towards the root...
" network implemented in custom silicon. This project, codenamed Elan-Elite, was started due to the massive delays in the T9000 Transputer from Inmos
INMOS
Inmos Limited was a British semiconductor company, founded by Iann Barron, with both the head office and the design office at Aztec West in Bristol, it was incorporated in November 1978.- Products :...
.
This comprised two devices, code-named Elan (adapter) and Elite (switch). Each processing element included an Elan chip, a communications co-processor based on the SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
architecture, accessed via a Sun MBus cache coherent
Cache coherence
In computing, cache coherence refers to the consistency of data stored in local caches of a shared resource.When clients in a system maintain caches of a common memory resource, problems may arise with inconsistent data. This is particularly true of CPUs in a multiprocessing system...
interface and providing two 50MB/s bi-directional links. The Elite chip was an 8-way link crossbar switch
Crossbar switch
In electronics, a crossbar switch is a switch connecting multiple inputs to multiple outputs in a matrix manner....
, used to form the packet-switched network. After the Meiko technology was acquired by Quadrics
Quadrics
Quadrics was a supercomputer company formed in 1996 as a joint venture between Alenia Spazio and the technical team from Meiko Scientific. They produced hardware and software for clustering commodity computer systems into massively parallel systems. Their highpoint was in June 2003 when six out of...
, the Elan/Elite interconnect technology was developed into QsNet
QsNet
QsNet is a high speed interconnect designed by Quadrics used in HPC clusters, particularly Linux Beowulf Clusters. Although it can be used with TCP/IP; like SCI, Myrinet and Infiniband it is usually used with a communication API such as MPI or SHMEM called from a parallel program.The interconnect...
.