Path: utzoo!censor!becker!ncrcan!attcan!uunet!ogicse!emory!hubcap!jordan
From: jordan@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Kenneth D Jordan)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Info on Connection Machine wanted
Keywords: Connection Machine, parallel processing, scientific computation
Message-ID: <12508@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 91 20:34:43 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Computing & Information Services
Lines: 29
Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

I have certain applications which can benefit substantially from
being parallelized, and I can have access to a relatively new
Connection machine.  Before I start (or decide on how my time
is best spent), I was hoping that someone with experience on a
Connection Machine could answer the following questions (in
no particular order):

    1.	How well does it perform floating point computations?
	I have been led to believe that the earlier models were
	rather poor in this respect, but that newer modess are
	much more proficient.  How's the instruction set?  How
	about matrix operations?

    2.	How tightly coupled are the processors?  How much overhead
	is involved in getting data from one processor to another?

    3.	How's the operating system?  UNIX-like?  Mature?

    4.	How about high level language support?  Concurrent C?  Ada?
	Fortran?  Parallel Prolog? 

    5.	If there is high level language support, how are the debuggers?

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Nick Nystrom
Chemistry Department
University of Pittsburgh
nystrom@a.psc.edu
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