Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!cica!gatech!hubcap!ksr!pbassett
From: ksr!pbassett@harvard.harvard.edu
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Re: Acquisition of a Parallel Computing System
Message-ID: <5977@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 12 Jul 89 12:50:04 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
Lines: 38
Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

I would recommend you talk to someone at BBN about their Butterfly
computer systems.  I don't know for sure who at BBN you should talk to
but here is the main address of the subsidiary that makes the Butterly:
			BBN Advanced Computers Inc.
			10 Fawcett St.
			Cambridge, MA 02138
			(617) 873-6000

The Butterfly is a shared memory machine which in my opinion provides
the programmer with a much easier and more general programming model
than the hyper-cube based machines (NCUBE, Connection Machine etc)
obviously some folks would disagree about this.  I know the Butterfly
has been used for a wide variety of purposes (most of them in R/D
environments): computer network packet switching, circuit simulation,
finite element analysis, factory automation/control, database
applications, neural network simulation etc.

The current machines are based based on 68020's with a custom VLSI
switch network.  Each node of the machine has a 68020, a 68xxx
floating point chip, a 68xxx memory management unit, 4 Meg of memory
and an interface to the switch network.  The switch network provides
uniform access time for every processor to every other processor's
memory. The memory access time scales logarithmically with the size of
the machine.

The smallest system they normally sell is, I believe 8 or 16
processors. I know they have a smaller, portable 4 processor box which
they use internally for software development, but I don't know if it
is sold externally.  The system can be expanded, (normally in 16 or 32
processor increments) up to either 128 or 256 processors.  The
operating system is CMU's MACH which is BSD UNIX compatible but was
specifically designed to support multi-processors.

I don't know anything about prices.

Good luck.

Paul Bassett