New Computer Architectures: A Survey

Artificial intelligence and database computations have historically taxed the computational resources of available computers. There is every reason to believe that the integration of these two disciplines will be, if anything, even more demanding in this respect It therefore makes sense to ask what kinds of computer architectures we might expect in the near future that will be able to deliver significantly greater raw computing power for this type of problem. This paper will summarize some of the most important design choices for the “new wave” of high-performance computers. It is an attempt to identify a design space in which most of the proposed supercomputer designs can be sensibly placed by listing common, key decisions that must be made in any design. To the first approximation these choices are independent, so that in principle there could be a different computer architecture for every combination of alternatives.