Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: baizer@cs.ucsb.edu (Eric Baizer)
Subject: Patterson Lecture May 8
Organization: University of California, Santa Barbara
Date: 25 Apr 1995 11:27:23 -0700
Message-ID: <3nlin3$iad@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>

               DISTINGUISHED LECTURER SERIES 
           Department of Computer Science - UCSB

                       David Patterson
                  Computer Science Division
            University of California at Berkeley
	
       ``A Case for Networks of Workstations: NOW''

           3:30 PM on Monday, May 8, 1995 
          ITP Lecture Room, 1003 Kohn Hall, UCSB

                          ABSTRACT

We propose to build hardware and software to enable a network of
workstations (NOW) to act as a single large-scale computer. Because of
volume production, commercial workstations today offer much better
price/performance than the individual nodes of MPPs; in addition,
switch-based networks such as ATM will provide cheap, high-bandwidth
communication.  This price/performance advantage is increased if the
NOW can be used for both the tasks traditionally run on workstations
and large programs. We hope to demonstrate a practical 100 processor
system in the next few years that delivers at the same time (1) better
cost-performance for parallel applications than a massively parallel
processing architecture (MPP) and (2) better performance for
sequential applications than an individual workstation (by using more
of the resources of the network).  If projects like NOW are
successful, they have the potential to redefine the high-end of the
computing industry.

To realize the potential of NOWs, we need to move two MPP technologies
into the workstation community: low latency networking and global
system software that treats a collection of processors, memory, and
disks as if they were a single machine.  Our approach is to leverage
off-the-shelf technology as much as possible -- workstation hardware,
standard workstation operating systems on each node, and local area
network ATM switches. To this, we will add communications protocol
software and a global system layer that together provide low overhead
communication, a single view of operating system services across the
cluster, parallel file I/O, and robustness to individual node
failures.  We will demonstrate our results by using our system for the
everyday computing needs, both sequential and parallel.

        The lecture is free and open to the public.
            Refreshments will be provided.

     For more information, please call the Department of Computer
Science, UCSB, (805) 893-4321 or check http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/distinguished/ 

       In cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society

