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From: cherwig@hubcap.clemson.edu (christoph herwig)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Re: CrOS (Crystalline OS ?)
Message-ID: <12708@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 91 13:05:36 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
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Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

In article <12681@hubcap.clemson.edu> liu@buster.cps.msu.edu (Yew Liu) writes:
>
>Could anyone tell me any info about CrOS? I think it
>was called Crystalline OS. I need to find any article
>that explains what it is. 
>
You are right: CrOS stands for crystalline OS. CrOS III was designed at
Caltech to run efficiently on a specific concurrent processor, the Mark
III hypercube. Two books can provide you with startup information about
CrOS III:

1. Solving problems on concurrent processors, General Techniques and
   regular problems; Volume I; G.Fox et al.; Prentice Hall; 1988

2. Solving problems on concurrent processors, Software for concurrent
   processors; Volume II; I.Angus et al.; Prentice Hall; 1990

Although CrOS III was motivated by particular design of hypercube, it
has been written to be easily implemented on other machines. As
described in Volume II, it runs particularly efficient on the
Caltech/JPL Mark III. For other commercial hypercubes, such as the nCube
and iPSc/1 (don't know about iPSc/2 or iPSc/860), it can be implemented
simply, but inefficiently, in terms of the native message-passing
primitives. On machines with other architectures, such as shared memory
multiprocessors, it is implemented by simulating the hypercube
communication channels in software.

Especially Volume II will be useful and more up-to-data. You will find
the description of the implementation on the various machines. The
appendices of both volumes give you source code and manual pages of the
'utility library'.

Christoph

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Christoph Herwig
  cherwig@hubcap.clemson.edu
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Clemson University, SC
Elektrotechnik
  Technical University Aachen, Germany
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technical university Aachen, germany