
Convex Exemplar SPP1000, SPP1200 & SPP1600 External connectors
The four rings are implementations of the IEEE Standard 1596-1992 (SCI), called by Convex CTI
— Convex Toroidal Interconnect.
Each ring is only unidirectional and has a bandwidth of 600MB/s (16-bit differential, 300MHz
clock)
Complete CTI bandwidth is thus 2.4GB/s.
Each node’s main memory is globally accessible from other nodes on the CTI network (that is,
local memory is globally shared).
Memory access to global memory goes from the processor through the local crossbar to the local
functional unit whose memory controller is associated with the remote memory — it attaches to
the same CTI ring the remote memory/CCMC attaches to. (The A Comparative Evaluation of
Hierarchical Network Architecture of the HP-Convex Exemplar paper in the References has a
detailed discussion of the CTI ring topology, memory access and performance.)
4.48.4 External connectors
SCSI depending on installed controller
Console/control connections for the control workstation (teststation)
4.48.5 References
Manuals
SPP1200/CD Scalable Computing System, Convex Data Sheet (1995: Convex Computer Corpo-
ration)
SPP1200/XA Scalable Computing System, Convex Data Sheet (1995: Convex Computer Corpo-
ration) [did not find appropriate URLs for these two Convex data sheets — Ed.]
Articles
A Comparative Evaluation of Hierarchical Network Architecture of the HP-Convex Exemplar
229
(Postscript) Robert Castaneda, et al. (1997: in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on
Computer Design (ICCD’97) [there is a mirrored PDF version from citeseer
230
(accessed August
2008)]
Characterizing Shared Memory and Communication Performance: A Case Study of the Convex
SPP-1000
231
(Postscript) Gheith A. Abandah and Edward S. Davidson (January 1996: University
of Michigan. Accessed August 2008)
An Empirical Evaluation of the Convex SPP-1000 Hierarchical Shared Memory System
232
(PDF)
Thomas Sterling, et al. (1995: Proceedings of the IFIP WG10.3 working conference on Parallel
architectures and compilation techniques. Citeseer mirror accessed April 2009)
229
http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/hpcs/WWW/HTML/publications/papers/TR-97-6.ps.Z
230
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cache/papers/cs/6798/http:zSzzSzwww.cs.wm.eduzSzhpcszSzWWWzSzHTMLzSzpublicationszSz.
zSzpaperszSzTR-97-6.pdf/castaneda97comparative.pdf
231
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/PPP/CSE-TR-277-96.ps
232
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.53.8760&rep=rep1&type=pdf
317
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