Supercomputers and VLSI: The Effect of Large Scale Integration on Computer Architecture

摘要

The use of VLSI technology to build supercomputers is analyzed in depth. The benefits of VLSI are reviewed, and the liabilities are explored thoroughly. The perimeter problem and the planarity problem are identified as being critical limits on architectural design. The CHiP architecture, a highly parallel computer designed with VLSI implementation in mind, is scrutinized in terms of how well it exploits the benefit fo VLSI and how well it avoids the liabilities. Not surprisingly, it does pretty well. (Author)