The Supercomputer Toolkit and Its Applications

Abstract

The Supercomputer Toolkit is a proposed family of standard hardware and software components from which special-purpose machines can be easily configured. Using the Toolkit, a scientist or an engineer, starting with a suitable computational problem, will be able to readily configure a special purpose multiprocessor that attains supercomputer-class performance on that problem, at a fraction of the cost of a general purpose supercomputer. The Toolkit is currently being built as a joint project between Hewlett-Packard and MIT. The software and the applications are in various stages of development and research.