Much of the department's current research is related to parallel computing. The Parallel Computing Project provides infrastructure (equipment, maintenance, staff) for this research.
The project has been supported by the National Science Foundation under two awards from the Coordinated Experimental Research / Institutional Infrastructure (CER/II) Program. Research equipment acquired under the aegis of the project includes a 20-processor Sequent Symmetry-81 shared memory multiprocessor, a 1024-node MasPar data parallel machine, and, most recently, a 64-cell Kendall Square Research KSR-2 scalable shared memory system (as well as a smaller KSR-1 system for experimental systems work). A 16-node Intel Paragon was recently acquired under a project joint with colleagues in Electrical Engineering.
The Principal Investigators of the project are the ``custodians'' of the infrastructure. In addition, each of them, along with many of the other members of the department, has an independently-funded research effort that benefits from the infrastructure. Also, as alluded to above, the research equipment acquired under the project serves as the catalyst for a wide range of interactions with colleagues in other disciplines.
The NSF CER/II Program was initiated in 1980. The University of Washington received the first award in this program and has held funding continuously since that time. In September 1980 the Eden Project received a five-year award to explore a specific approach to building ``integrated distributed'' computer systems. In September 1985 the Heterogeneous Computer System Project received a two-year award to study strategies for interconnecting heterogeneous computer systems in a research environment. The Parallel Computing Project allows us to continue to expand our experimental research activities.
Principal Investigators: Anderson, Borning, DeRose, Lazowska, Levy, Notkin, Snyder, Tanimoto, Zahorjan