Gregory G. Finn
Abstract
A workstation may be thought of as a group of cooperatively connected subsystems. Point--to--point channels may be used to create a small--scale Gigabit LAN to which these subsystems are attached as nodes. The architectural focus of such a workstation shifts towards its internal LAN. An attractive attribute of this LAN is that its aggregate capacity scales linearly with the number of nodes attached to it.If the link--layer of the internal LAN is made equivalent to the link--layer of the external LAN, interior nodes become directly accessible externally. Except for latency the distinction between whether a node is inside a workstation versus outside it need not be significant. This property is particularly attractive for distributed communication--intensive applications.
- {1} Partridge, C. How Slow is One Gigabit Per Second Computer Communication Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, January 1990. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- {2} Jain, N., Schwartz, M., Bashkow, T. R. Transport Protocol Processing at GBPS Rates Proceedings of Sigcomm-90, pp. 188-199. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {3} Kanakia, H., Cheriton, D.R. The VMP Network Adapter Board (NAB): High-Performance Network Communication for Multiprocessors Proceedings of Sigcomm-88, pp. 175-187. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {4} Arnould, E., Bitz, F., Cooper, E., Kung, H. T., Sansom, R., Steenkiste, P. The Design of Nectar: A Network Backplane for Heterogeneous Multicomputers Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, ACM 1989, pp. 205-216. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {5} Clark, D. D., Tennenhouse, D. L. Architectural Considerations for a New Generation of Protocols Proceedings of Sigcomm-90, pp. 200-208. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {6} Schroeder, M. D., Birrel, A. D., et al. Autonet: a High-speed, Self-configuring Local Area Network Using Point-to-point Links Digital Equipment Corporation, SRC Research Report 59, April 30 1990.Google Scholar
- {7} Athas, W.C., Seitz, C.L. Multicomputers: Message-Passing Concurrent Computers IEEE Computer, pp. 9-24, August 1988. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {8} SCI-Scalable Coherent Interface Draft Report P1596: Section 1 / D0.85. IEEE.Google Scholar
- {9} Seitz, C. L. Concurrent Architectures Chapter 1 in VLSI and Parallel Computation, Ed. Suaya, R., Birtwistle, G. Morgan and Kaufmann, 1990. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {10} Cheriton, D. R. SirpentTM: A High-Performance Internetworking Approach Proceedings of Sigcomm-89, pp. 158-169. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {11} Submicron Systems Architecture Project Semiannual Technical Report California Institute of Technology, Computer Science Caltech-CS-TR-90-05.Google Scholar
- {12} Dally, W.J., Seitz, C.L. Deadlock-Free Message Routing in Multiprocessor Interconnection Networks IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. C-36, No. 5, May 1987. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {13} Kermani, P., Kleinrock, L. Virtual Cut-Through: A New Computer Communication Switching Technique Computer Networks, 3(4), pp. 267-286, September 1979.Google Scholar
- {14} Flaig, C.M. VLSI Mesh Routing Systems California Institute of Technology, Computer Science 5241:TR:87, May 1987. Google ScholarDigital Library
- {15} Cohen, D. Personal Communication, May 1991.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- An integration of network communication with workstation architecture
Recommendations
Porting a user-level communication architecture to NT: experiences and performance
WINSYM'99: Proceedings of the 3rd conference on USENIX Windows NT Symposium - Volume 3This paper describes our experiences in porting the VMMC user-level communication architecture from Linux to Windows NT. The original Linux implementation required no operating system changes and was done entirely using device drivers and user-level ...
Workstation
Encyclopedia of Computer ScienceA workstation is a powerful graphics-oriented microcomputer intended for a single user. When workstations were introduced in the early 1980s they were distinguished by their large bitmapped displays and their use of a mouse (q.v.) for input, at a time ...
Comments