THE MODULAR EXPANDABLE MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEM MEMSY

The experimental multiprocessor system MEMSY was built to validate the concept of a scalable multiprocessor architecture based on local shar ed memory. The main application areas are scientific computations with high demand for processing power and memory capacity. In designing th e hardware architecture the extensive use of standard components and f ault tolerance were prerequisites. The programming model of MEMSY is c ustom made, reflecting its true hardware structure, whereas the operat ing system is a Unix extension. In massively parallel systems with its complexity and large number of components the chance of a single or m ultiple failure is no longer negligible. Therefore, redundancy, reconf igurability and diagnosis techniques have been incorporated at the des ign stage itself and not as a subsequent add-on.