Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!svcs1!andy
From: andy@svcs1.UUCP (Andy Piziali)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Late, Lamented E&S-1 -- whats it look like?
Summary: Moderately parallel supercomputer.
Keywords: ES-1, Mach, parallel
Message-ID: <324@svcs1.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 89 17:01:45 GMT
References: <36652@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: andy@svcs1.UUCP (Andy Piziali)
Organization: Evans and Sutherland Computer Corporation, Mountain View, Ca.
Lines: 26

In article <36652@apple.Apple.COM> baum@apple.UUCP (Allen Baum) writes:

    Does anyone have details about the E&S-1?

The ES-1 is a shared memory MIMD supercomputer running the Mach operating
system.  The high-end configuration has 8 parallel processors where each
processor contains 16 computational units (CUs) and 256 MB.  The CUs are
connected to the memory system by a full 8x8 crossbar.  Processors are
connected to one another through a secondary crossbar which also serves as the
path to the I/O system.

Each CU has three independent pipelines: integer, floating point add, and
floating point multiply.  There are 32 integer registers and 64 floating point
registers.  The CU is heavily pipelined.

The memory system is 64-way interleaved and fully pipelined.

    What makes it different/special?

The ES-1 is different in that it delivers Cray class supercomputer performance
without resorting to vector facilities by providing a moderate number of CUs
for use by a like number of threads in a single parallel program.  The CUs may
also be time-shared in a multi-user environment like a classical mainframe.

These comments are my opinion, as a computer architect, and do not necessarily
represent those of my employer, Evans and Sutherland Computer Corporation.