Computing Surface
The Meiko Computing Surface (sometimes retrospectively referred to as the CS-1) was a massively parallel supercomputer. The system was based on the INMOS transputer microprocessor, later also using SPARC and Intel i860 processors.
The Computing Surface architecture comprised multiple boards containing transputers connected together by their communications links via Meiko-designed link switch chips. A variety of different boards were produced with different transputer variants, RAM capacities and peripherals.
The initial software environments provided for the Computing Surface was OPS (Occam Programming System), Meiko's version of INMOS's D700 Transputer Development System. This was soon superseded by a multi-user version, MultiOPS. Later, Meiko introduced M²VCS (Meiko Multiple Virtual Computing Surfaces), a multi-user resource management system which allowed the processors of a Computing Surface to be partitioned into several domains of different sizes. These domains were allocated by M²VCS to individual users, thus allowing several simultaneous users access to their own virtual Computing Surfaces. M²VCS was used in conjunction with either OPS or MeikOS, a Unix-like single-processor operating system.
In 1988, Meiko launched the In-Sun Computing Surface, which repackaged the Computing Surface into VMEbus boards (designated the MK200 series) suitable for installation in larger Sun-3 or Sun-4 systems. The Sun acted as "front-end" host system for managing the transputers, running development tools and providing mass storage. A version of M²VCS running as a SunOS daemon called SVCS (Sun Virtual Computing Surfaces) provided access between the transputer network and the Sun host.
As the performance of the transputer became less competitive towards the end of the 1980s (the follow-on T9000 transputer being beset with delays) Meiko added the ability to supplement the transputers with Intel i860 processors. Each i860 board (MK086 or MK096) contained two i860s with up to 32 MB of RAM each, and two T800s providing inter-processor communication. Sometimes known as the Concerto or simply the i860 Computing Surface, these systems had limited success.
Meiko also produced a SPARC processor board, the MK083, which allowed the integration of the SunOS operating system into the Computing Surface architecture, similarly to the In-Sun Computing Surface. These were usually used as front-end host processors for transputer or i860 Computing Surfaces. SVCS, or an improved version, called simply VCS was used to manage the transputer resources. Computing Surface configurations with multiple MK083 boards were also possible.
A major drawback of the Computing Surface architecture was poor I/O bandwidth for general data shuffling. Although aggregate bandwidth for special case data shuffling could be very high, the general case has very poor performance relative to the compute bandwidth. This made the Meiko Computing Surface uneconomic for many applications.
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