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The El'brus-3 and MARS-M: Recent advances in Russian high-performance computing

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Abstract

The El'brus-3 and MARS-M represent two recent efforts to address the Soviet Union's high-performance computing needs through original, indigenous development. The El'brus-3 extends very long instruction word (VLIW) concepts to a multiprocessor environment and offers features that increase performance and efficiency and decrease code size for both scientific and general-purpose applications. It incorporates procedure static and globally dynamic instruction scheduling, multiple, simultaneous branch path execution, and iteration frames for executing loops with recurrences and conditional branches. The MARS-M integrates VLIW, data flow, decoupled heterogeneous processors, and hierarchical systems into a unified framework. It also offers a combination of static and dynamic VLIW scheduling. While the viability of these machines has been demonstrated, significant barriers to their production and use remain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Informatics Systems, 630090, Novosibirsk, Russia

    Mikhail N. Dorozhevets

  2. University of Arizona, 85721, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Peter Wolcott

Authors
  1. Mikhail N. Dorozhevets
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  2. Peter Wolcott
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This paper was written nearly entirely by means of e-mail between Tucson and Novosibirsk. It is one of the first examples of this type of collaboration between Russian and American colleagues.

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Dorozhevets, M.N., Wolcott, P. The El'brus-3 and MARS-M: Recent advances in Russian high-performance computing. J Supercomput 6, 5–48 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00128641

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