Reference:

Anant Agarwal, John Kubiatowicz, David Kranz, Beng-Hong Lim, Donald Yeung, Godfrey D'Souza, and Mike Parkin. Sparcle: An Evolutionary Processor Design for Large-Scale Multiprocessors. IEEE Micro, pages 48-61, June 1993.
(pdf, compressed postscript)

Abstract:

Sparcle is a processor chip developed jointly by MIT, LSI Logic, and SUN Microsystems, by evolving an existing RISC architecture towards a processor suited for large-scale multiprocessors. Sparcle supports three multiprocessor mechanisms: fast context switching, fast user-level message handling, and fine-grain synchronization. The Sparcle effort demonstrates that RISC architectures coupled with a communications and memory management unit do not require major architectural changes to support multiprocessing efficiently.

Back to Alewife Publications.
Back to Alewife.

webmaster@cag.lcs.mit.edu $Date: 1998/01/06 16:49:48 $