ILLIAC IV
ILLIAC IV is the supercomputer of the ILLIAC family (ILLInois Automated Computer) of 1965 of release. It was constructed by the University of Illinois together with Burroughs corporation by request of NASA. ILLIAC IV — the direct competitor of the Soviet BESM-6. Architecturally ILLIAC IV represented a multiprocessor system (64 processors, but when by 1972 the cost of a system increased up to 31 million dollars were originally conceived, stopped on 16). It became the first computer in which fast memory on chips was used. Capacity of each chip (productions Fairchild Semiconductor, based, by the way, by G. Mur) — 256 bits, and all were gained 1 MB — on 64K on the processor. High-speed performance of such option reached 150 — 200 Mflops. Some characteristics of ILLIAC IV impress and now: for example, high-speed performance of a subsystem of input-output — 1 Gbod. For comparison, high-speed performance of BESM-6 made only 1 Mflops, but on a ratio performance/price it far bypassed the competitor: in a high-speed electronic computer there were only 60 thousand transistors, and only one chip of memory contained one thousand in Illiaka. ILLIAC IV only in 1983 was dismantled.
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Architecture
ILLIAC IV was formed by a chain of the calculators connected with each other, each of which located as own small RAM (2048 64-bit words), and separated with two neighbors OZU. It is more than that, each calculator could not only address memory of the direct neighbors, but also was capable to transfer data to four previous and four subsequent calculators to chains. Use of calculators in the 32-bit mode was allowed, in this case their quantity in a chain doubled. The separate computer coordinated operation of all calculators. According to the commonly accepted classification ILLIAC IV was the representative of SIMD architecture (in which one flow of commands processes many data streams). In fact, the architecture of ILLIAC IV in 1976 anticipated what literally in a couple of years the Chinese erudite Hsiang-Tsung Kung working at the American university of Carnegie Mellon for the first time called a systolic matrix.
Systolic matrix
In the "canonical" machine of architecture "the systolic matrix" is used an array of the specific asynchronous computing elements, related to neighbors, locating all necessary resources and working independently of each other. Data streams move on edge elements of an array, are processed by them and, in process of readiness, results become input data for coupled elements. Figuratively speaking on an array of calculators of systolic architecture "the wave of data" runs, and all system becomes such superpipeline in which at each stage very difficult tasks of processing can be carried out. Systolic matrixes very much fell in love in due time just with those who within the set budget should have solved problems of processing of data streams from multiple sensors in real time – military, the aerospace industry.
Interesting Facts
- According to some information ILLIAC IV was a visual prototype of the HAL 9000 supercomputer which was used by the spaceship in the movie "Space Odyssey of 2001" by Stanley Kubrick
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