MIT Fugu Scalable Workstation

[front view of 16-node Alewife machine]

Scalable workstations are a proposed technology that offer efficient and protected communication at a low cost. This technology includes a user-level communications unit and a commodity computing node that is evolved from today's workstation components and can serve in multiscale systems including single-processor workstations, servers, and MPPs. Scalable workstations replace a bus with a cost-effective, low-latency VLSI interconnect. These systems can run existing software and have the potential to provide a unified computing platform that replaces both bus-based servers and MPPs.

The goal of the Fugu workstation project is to demonstrate that protection and translation can be implemented in scalable multiprocessors with high-performance shared memory and user-level messaging. A two-node Fugu prototype has been constructed leveraging off Alewife's VLSI components and packaging. Further information is available as:

Overview memo: Fugu: Implementing Translation and Protection in a Multiuser, Multimodel Multiprocessor. (1994)
Paper on the messaging system: Exploiting Two-Case Delivery for Fast Protected Messasging (HPCA, 1998)
Ph.D. Thesis: An Efficient Virtual Network Interface in the FUGU Scalable Workstation (1997)

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