Supercomputers-the power of parallelism

The shift in supercomputing toward massively parallel processors (MPPs) and their potential impact are discussed. The need for standards and the technical ferment engendered by competition in this budding market are examined, the various architectures are defined, and three examples, the CM-5, the Paragon, and the nCube 2S, are described. Issues of concern for MPPs are addressed, with particular attention to bandwidth and memory sharing. >