Meiko Scientific Ltd. was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
supercomputerA supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation , and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form...
company based in
BristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, west of London, and east of Cardiff.With an estimated population of 416,400 for the unitary authority in mid-2007, and a surrounding urban area with an estimated 561,500 residents, it is England's sixth, and...
, founded by members of the design team working on the
INMOS transputerA transputer was a pioneering concurrent computing microprocessor design of the 1980s from INMOS, a British semiconductor company based in Bristol....
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit words...
.
History
In 1985, when
INMOSInmos Limited was a British semiconductor company, founded by Iann Barron, based in Bristol and 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 (
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
for "well-engineered") to start work on
massively parallelMassively parallel is a description which appears in computer science, life science, 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
SIGGRAPHSIGGRAPH 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 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 of Italy in mid-1996. At Quadrics, the CS-2 interconnect technology was developed into
QsNetQsNet 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 is a description which appears in computer science, life science, 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,...
supercomputerA supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation , and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form...
. The system was based on the
INMOSInmos Limited was a British semiconductor company, founded by Iann Barron, based in Bristol and incorporated in November 1978.- Products :...
transputer
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit words...
, later also using
SPARCSPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems introduced in 1986.SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc., an organization established in 1989 to promote the SPARC architecture and to provide conformance testing...
and
Intel i860The 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. It was released with considerable fanfare, and obscured the subsequent release of the...
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-userMulti-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-likeA 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 systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
.
In 1988, Meiko launched the In-Sun Computing Surface, which repackaged the Computing Surface into
VMEbusVMEbus 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-3Sun-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-4Sun-4 is a series of Unix computer 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
SunOSSunOS 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...
daemonIn Unix and other computer multitasking operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user; they are usually initiated as background processes...
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
SunOSSunOS 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/OIn 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...
bandwidthIn computer networking and computer science, digital bandwidth, network bandwidth or just bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bit/s or multiples of it ....
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-likeA 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 systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
developed for the Computing Surface during the late 1980s.
MeikOS was derived from an early version of
MINIXMINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture. Andrew S. Tanenbaum wrote the operating system to be used for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel...
, extensively modified for the Computing Surface architecture. Unlike
HeliOSHeliOS 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
SCSISmall Computer System Interface, or SCSI , 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...
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
SPARCSPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems introduced in 1986.SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc., an organization established in 1989 to promote the SPARC architecture and to provide conformance testing...
processor board, which allowed
SunOSSunOS 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
SuperSPARCSPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems introduced in 1986.SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc., an organization established in 1989 to promote the SPARC architecture and to provide conformance testing...
or
hyperSPARCThe hyperSPARC, code-named "Pinnacle", is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC Version 8 instruction set architecture developed by Ross Technology for Cypress Semiconductor. The hyperSPARC was introduced in 1993, and competed with the Sun Microsystems SuperSPARC. Raju Vegesna was the...
processors and, optionally,
Fujitsuis a Japanese multinational computer hardware and IT services company headquartered in the Shiodome City Center complex in Minato, Tokyo.. Fujitsu's central focus is on providing IT-driven business solutions, but the company and its subsidiaries also offer a diversity of products and services in...
μVP
vector processorA vector processor, or array processor, is a CPU design wherein the instruction set includes operations that can perform mathematical operations on multiple data elements simultaneously. This is in contrast to a scalar processor, which handles one element at a time using multiple instructions. The...
s. These implemented an instruction set similar to the
Fujitsu VP2000The VP2000 were the second series of vector processor supercomputers from Fujitsu. They replaced their earlier Fujitsu VP series machines starting in 1990, and sold for a short period before being replaced by various massively parallel machines....
vector supercomputer and had a nominal performance of 200 megaflops on
double precisionIn computing, a double precision is a usually binary floating-point computer numbering format that occupies 8 bytes in computer memory.In IEEE 754-2008 the 64-bit base 2 format is officially referred to as binary64...
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 LaboratoryThe Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California is a scientific research laboratory 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 systemSolaris is a UNIX-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS.Solaris is known for its scalability, especially on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace and ZFS...
, initially Solaris 2.1, later 2.3 and 2.5.1.
The processors in a CS-2 were connected by a multi-stage packet-switched "
fat treeThe 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 comprised two devices, code-named
Elan and
Elite. Each processing element included an Elan chip, a communications co-processor based on the SPARC architecture, accessed via a Sun MBus interface and providing two 50MB/s bi-directional links. The Elite chip was an 8-way link
crossbar switchIn 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 Meiko technology was acquired by
QuadricsQuadrics 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
QsNetQsNet 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...
.
External links