StarT-Voyager

This paper describes the StarT-Voyager Cluster Area Network (ClAN) Parallel System. ClAN is a new class of parallel systems designed to bridge the performance and functionality gap between traditional MPPs and NOWs (networks of workstations). By constructing a parallel machine with unmodified commercial SMPs as the building block, a ClAN system inherits most of the advantages of the NOW approach. In addition by chosing the coherent memory bus as the point of interface, a ClAN system achieves better message passing performance than NOWs, and also offers coherent distributed shared memory. 1 Introduction StarT-Voyager is a prototype Cluster Area Network (ClAN) parallel System under development at MIT. We are proposing ClAN systems as a new class of machine to bridge the performance and functionality gap between MPPs / supercomputers, and networks of workstations (NOWs). The goal of StarT-Voyager is to turn a collection of commercial SMP's into a distributed parallel machine by replacin..