DIY 1980s "Non-Von" Supercomputer 135
Brietech writes "Ever wanted to own your own supercomputer? This guy recreated a 31-processor SIMD supercomputer from the early 1980s called the 'Non-Von 1' in an FPGA. It uses a 'Non-Von Neumann' architecture, and was intended for extremely fast database searches and artificial intelligence applications. Full-scale models were intended to have more than a million processors. It's a cool project for those interested in 'alternative' computer architectures, and yes, full source code (Verilog) is available, along with a python library to program it with." Hope the WIPO patent has expired.
Holy CRAP! (Score:3, Interesting)
FTFA:
What if I want to build my own?
Yay open-source! The code isnâ(TM)t exactly polished, but in the interest of promoting weird retro computer architectures, Iâ(TM)ve provided the python library I wrote for it and the verilog code for the Processing Elements. Wire together as many as youâ(TM)d like! Use it to catalog all of your WhiteSnake and Duran Duran tapes!
How the hell did he know about my music collection?
This is pretty cool. 32 core non-von computing architecture on an FPGA. This is more or less the ARM process... license the IP and put it in an ASIC, except this is free. I've often wondered what might be done with the millions of 30xx series FPGAs that are out there in the world. I could lay my hands on probably 40-50 free. If there were some way to do something like this with them, that would be awesome. I like hobby robotics so it's tempting even though they would not be very power efficient. Still, that's a lot of potential processing for free. Now I'm going to have to look for free/open source code for them.
Transputer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Neat... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course a modern computer can simulate a 1980's computer. It would probably take about a day to write a functional simulation in Java.
For that matter, it's not like this computer can do anything that a modern computer can't do in spite of the different architecture. It was designed to do certain things fast, but anything off the shelf today could run circles around these relics regardless of such optimization. (To GP's point -- since the article indicates that he was building to the functional design of the original, it's probably not powerful by today's standards. He may have used faster components than they had back then -- and he obviously used smaller components than they had back then -- but we're not looking at a modern billions-and-billions-of-transistors-on-a-chip optimized-in-ways-you-cannot-comprehend heat-sink-needing CPU.) So once you talk about "what can it do" at a useful level of abstraction, the answer is "nothing all that practical".
But that's not the point, is it? This kind of stuff is a hobby and a fascination to some people. I'm interested enough that I might write a software simulation of the machine, but not interested enough to build one. This guy was interested enough to build one.
It's not like stamp collectors are saving up for a big letter-writing campaign...
MasPar (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW: the system was used to help with the human genome project and to search Medical Services Plan data by the Province of BC. It finally decommissioned in 2000 (or early 2001).
Re:MasPar (Score:1, Interesting)
I helped install the MasPar at our Uni (as a student employee in computer services) and helped with its upgrade to 8k processors. It got used for a few simulations and some password cracking :)
It was too bad that it never got more use for any of the tasks it'd have been really good at. Eventually the vendor failed, the software stopped being updated, and the MasPar was recycled... almost.
At that time the U sold older computers in a biannual surplus auction, so students could get a 386 or whatever for their dorm or home. I went to get some hardware or whatever caught my eye, at the time I was living on one floor of a house off campus.
The maspar compute unit was being sold for $10, without the workstation front end (a DecStation). The cable to connect it was missing. But, I was more interested in workstations than in PCs, and I spied the front end along with our original DEC Alpha near the front of the sale on a pallet of to-be-recycled items. I bought the compute unit, then talked the sale admins into selling me the pallet for $100, most of which I made back immediately selling a couple Macs off the top.
I then took the maspar home, almost dying getting it up the stairs (verrrry heavy) and setting it up in my living room. I pulled the internal cable out of the compute unit and extended it far enough out to reach the front end, then started it up. I had to break the root password, but I got it all working.
Unfortunately I didn't have the system CD nor the license Paks, and I didn't have any maspar software. I did download a few things and played, but I couldn't do anything interesting with the system without more development tools. Plus running the thing heated the living room on its own.
Eventually I moved out and sold the decstation front end on ebay, along with the alpha, and junked the data array. It actually fell down my front steps and tumbled over... heck of an end for a half million dollar piece of hardware.
Erik
Re:Neat... (Score:3, Interesting)
An architecture like this is useful for massively parallel algorithms. It could theoretically outperform modern desktop or server systems within that domain.
In fact, a rebuild of COLOSSUS [wikipedia.org] was estimated to be 240 times slower than a modern desktop at decoding old German cryptographic signals. That might not sound that good, but if you run Moore's Law in reverse over 60 years, you should get a factor a lot higher than 240.
Offtopic trip down memory lane (Score:5, Interesting)
I got a chance to use a Connection Machine (real, not emulated) in the late 1980s, just a couple of years out of college. It was an internal R&D project for a defense contractor, porting a computational fluid dynamics program I didn't understand from Cray vectorized Fortran to the CM's *Lisp. Fun stuff.
I even got a chance to visit Thinking Machines headquarters in Boston, and hear Danny Hillis speak. Here he was speaking to a room full of suits, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt. I remember thinking at the time that being able to do that was quite an indicator of success.
Yeah, yeah, I know...offtopic, overrated, etc. So mod me down if you must. (Or is that just reverse psychology on you moderators? Muhahaha!)
Re:Transputer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Holy CRAP! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Neat... (Score:3, Interesting)
4x slower is much better than 40x or 400x slower (see gcc vs Ruby), that's what I wanted to show. Where did I say that gcj was faster than gcc?