Cray Research developed, manufactured, and offered a supercomputer known as the CRAY-X-MP for sale. The company created the first parallel vector processor (PVP) system with shared memory. It replaced the 1976 Cray-1 in 1982 and served as the fastest computer in the world from 1983 until 1985. Steve Chen served as the lead designer. Its mainframe, which housed its two CPUs, was almost identical to the Cray-1’s exterior.
Introduction Of CRAY-X-MP (supercomputer)
The X-MP shared the “horseshoe” shape of the older device and had a nearly identical exterior. The processors’ starting clock frequency was 9.5 nanoseconds (105 Megahertz) compared to the Cray-1A’s 12.5 ns, which gave the first 1982 system with processor cores a maximum speed of 400 megaflops and a theoretical peak performance of 200 megaflops for each CPU. More exceptional chaining capability and primary memory transfer with multiple memory ports per processor were other improvements over the Cray-1.
Description Of CRAY-X-MP (supercomputer)
Over time, Cray Research made constant improvements to the X-MP. The X-MP/48 (1984) had 4 CPUs and could theoretically run at over 800 megaflops per second. With the X-MP/48, vector gathers/scatter memory reference instructions were added to the line. A per-CPU peak speed of nearly 230 MFlops was achieved with 8.5 ns (117 MHz) enhanced clock rates. Memory sizes expanded over time due to the X-MP/EA series machines (1986), which supported the older Cray Y-MP 32-bit memory addressing and the more recent Cray-1 compatible 24-bit one.
The machine was Cray-1 object-code compatible and initially ran the exclusive Cray Operating System (COS). A guest operating system facility was used to run UniCOS, a UNIX System V derivative. As of 1986, UniCOS was the dominant operating system. The Cray Time Sharing System OS was utilized by the DOE instead.
| Cray X-MP | ||
| Design | ||
| Manufacturer | Cray Research | |
| Designer | Steve Chen | |
| Release date | 1982 | |
| Price | $15 million | |
| Casing | ||
| Dimensions | 2.62 meters (8.6 feet) x 1.96 meter (6.4 ft) | |
| Weight | 5.12 t (11,300 lb.) | |
| Power | 345 kW | |
| System | ||
| Front-end | a majority of minicomputers at the time | |
| Operating system | COS, UNICOS | |
| CPU | 64 bit, 4x vector processor, 105–117 MHz | |
| Memory | 128 megabytes | |
| Storage | 38.4 gigabytes (32 disks) | |
| MIPS | 400 MIPS (4 CPU) | |
| FLOPS | 800 MFLOPS (4 CPU) | |
| Predecessor | Cray-1 | |
| Successor | Cray Y-MP |
Users can employ multiple programming languages due to the Flex XP multiprocessor configurations.
The I/O Subsystem
Input/output (I/O) systems may contain up to 4 I/O processors and approximately 2 to thirty-two data storage units. The Ibis DD-39 and DD-49 hard drives each contained 1200 megabytes (blocked and formatted) at unstriped transfer rates of 5.9 MB/s and 9.8 MB/s, respectively, and had a raw transfer rate of 13.3 MB/s. Other solid-state drives offered transmission rates of (100 to 1,000 Megabytes per channel and 256, 512, or 1024 MB storage capacities. There was room for data storage of up to 38 gigabytes. The machine could directly interact with IBM 3420 & 3480 tape devices for magnetic tape I/O without requiring considerable CPU processing.
Conclusion
The X-MP is a multi – processor concept that is built on the Cray-1’s basic architecture and contains the 16-gate emitter-coupled logic gate arrays used in the Cray-2 project. A two-processor system with a performance 1.5 2 times better than the Cray-1 was the target.
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