Supercomputer accelerator card for PC

Abstract This paper is a presentation of a computer project with eventual test performances. The purpose of the project is to obtain a supercomputer's processing capacity at a PC (Personal Computer) level without loosing the extended PC's flexible and user-oriented software profile. This is achieved by developing an accelerator card for being inserted in a PC slot. The accelerator is meant for handling time consuming mathematical calculations such as numerical solutions of coupled differential equations and matrix operations. The software for handling these mathematical calculations on the accelerator card will be developed as a general purpose simulation package in the form of a mathematical spreadsheet and a standard FORTRAN compiler accessible within an MSdos or UNIX environment. The goal of the accelerator card is approximately 35 MFlops speed (peak performance) with 64 bit precision and 6 Mbyte memory. The card is ready for tests in November 1988 and the details of the actual performance of the hardware and software are expected in January 1989.