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Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 21:01:37 GMTServer: NCSA/1.5Content-type: text/htmlLast-modified: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 20:27:43 GMTContent-length: 5319<html><head><title> Wisconsin Week Article </title></head><body><hr><h1>UW Researchers Ride Supercomputing's New Wave</h1><p>by Brian Mattmiller, Wisconsin Week, November 16, 1994, p. 12<hr><p>MADISON - A new generation of supercomputers capable of solvingstaggeringly complex problems -- from mapping the human genome to designingnew drugs -- is being advanced by a team of University of Wisconsin-Madisonscientists.<p>A $2.4 million federal grant awarded this fall to a UW-Madisoncomputer science group places the university at the forefront of researchinto parallel supercomputing. The three-year grant from the Department ofDefense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) will help the UW-Madisonteam develop new computers that are faster and more adept at organizingvast volumes of data.<p>The grant brings UW-Madison's total federal support in this area to$4.5 million.<p>Parallel supercomputers operate by using many processors to worksimultaneously on a single complex problem, where a conventionalsupercomputer uses only a few. The processor is a computer's mathematicalengine, and the new parallel machines can have literally thousands of themworking in tandem on specialized tasks.<p>The end result: Parallel computers can solve problems once toolarge for conventional computers.<p>"In parallel computing, speed is the only thing that matters," saidBarton Miller, a computer science professor and one of four investigatorsin the project. "Your customers are people who have really big problems,where millions of computations per second is not enough. You're trying toreach billions."<p>Researchers Miller, Mark Hill, James Larus and David Wood, allcomputer science faculty, have two different projects in the works,nicknamed<!WA0><!WA0><!WA0><!WA0><!WA0><!WA0><!WA0><!WA0><!WA0><A HREF="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~paradyn/">"Paradyn"</A><!WA1><!WA1><!WA1><!WA1><!WA1><!WA1><!WA1><!WA1><!WA1><A HREF="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~wwt/">"Wisconsin Wind Tunnel".</A>Paradyn focuses primarilyon increasing computer speed by developing tools that will automaticallyisolate the slowest parts of a program, and give a programmer preciseinformation of the cause of the slow-down.<p>Wisconsin Wind Tunnel, a name which alludes to the wind tunnelsused in aeronautics simulation, aims at developing a model to simulate newideas in parallel computer software and hardware without the expense ofbuilding a prototype.<p>"We're trying to change the computers that parallel computingvendors will be selling in five years," said Hill. "We can make themfaster, make the processors interact more effectively and make the softwaremore reliable."<p>Parallel computers are already doing remarkable things inlaboratories and industry. Miller said American Express has a parallelcomputer that offers lightning-fast profiles of customer spending patternsand serves as an early-warning system for credit card theft.<p>The computer can analyze receipt patterns, and notify the companyof any radical changes in a customer's spending. That's often a red flagfor credit card theft. With a follow-up call to clients, the company hasbeen able to alert customers before they realize their card's been stolen,he said.<p>American Express is using the same model of computer UW-Madisonowns -- a Thinking Machines model CM-5, which when purchased in 1991 wasone of the fastest in the world.<p>The research applications are equally sprawling. Parallel computingcould provide a timely breakthrough in sequencing the human genome, whichis comprised of some 3 billion distinct chemical bases. It also can be usedto greatly increase local precision in global weather forecasting.<p>Miller uses an employee metaphor to describe the drawback ofparallel computing -- getting all the processors to operate in sync. If anoffice of 100 employees must meet continually to keep everyone fullyinformed on a project, the work will take that much longer to complete.<p>"The inefficiency of the organization grows along with the numberof people who need to communicate," Miller said.<p>Likewise, the more processors one adds to parallel computers, theless efficient they become. Miller said the research is focusing on ways tomake each processor function more independently of the others, while stillsharing memory.<p>Their solution is called "fine-grain distributed shared memory,"which, plainly put, allows each part of the computer to quickly share datafrom other processors. This advance creates the illusion that eachprocessor contains memory for the entire computer.<p>Although cost puts the technology out of reach for most businessesand research efforts, the UW-Madison group is also looking at developingmore affordable variations on the theme. A technology called "Cluster ofWorkstations" (COW) would allow companies with work stations or networkedpersonal computers to run parallel software, without the costs of a newsystem.<p>"Parallel computing will not succeed with just the existence ofthese big machines," Hill said. "Automobiles wouldn't have succeeded if allwe made were Ferraris. We have to provide the Chevrolets as well."<p><hr>For more information, see:<ul><li> <!WA2><!WA2><!WA2><!WA2><!WA2><!WA2><!WA2><!WA2><!WA2><A HREF="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~paradyn/">Paradyn Home Page</A><li> <!WA3><!WA3><!WA3><!WA3><!WA3><!WA3><!WA3><!WA3><!WA3><A HREF="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~wwt/">Wisconsin Wind Tunnel Home Page</A></ul><hr></body></html>⌨️ 快捷键说明
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