Caltech Cosmic Cube
Encyclopedia
The Caltech Cosmic Cube was a parallel computer
, developed by Charles Seitz and Geoffrey Fox from 1981 onward.
It was an early attempt to capitalise on VLSI
to speed up scientific calculations at a reasonable cost. Using commodity hardware and an architecture suited to the specific task (QCD
), Fox and Seitz demonstrated that this was indeed possible.
In 1987 several people in the group formed a company called Parasoft
to commercialize the message passing interface developed for the Cosmic Cube.
Parallel computing
Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level,...
, developed by Charles Seitz and Geoffrey Fox from 1981 onward.
It was an early attempt to capitalise on VLSI
Very-large-scale integration
Very-large-scale integration is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. The microprocessor is a VLSI device.The first semiconductor...
to speed up scientific calculations at a reasonable cost. Using commodity hardware and an architecture suited to the specific task (QCD
Quantum chromodynamics
In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics is a theory of the strong interaction , a fundamental force describing the interactions of the quarks and gluons making up hadrons . It is the study of the SU Yang–Mills theory of color-charged fermions...
), Fox and Seitz demonstrated that this was indeed possible.
In 1987 several people in the group formed a company called Parasoft
Parasoft
Parasoft is an independent software vendor with headquarters in Monrovia, California. It was founded in 1987 by five graduates of the California Institute of Technology who had been working on Caltech Cosmic Cube....
to commercialize the message passing interface developed for the Cosmic Cube.
Characteristics
- 64 Intel 8086/87Intel 8086The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...
processors - 128kB of memory per processor
- 6-dimensional hypercubeHypercubeIn geometry, a hypercube is an n-dimensional analogue of a square and a cube . It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions, perpendicular to each other and of the same length.An...
network, i. e. each processor can directly exchange data with six other processors.