Percola: A Special Purpose Programmable 64-BIT Floating-Point Processor.

摘要

The computer PERCOLA is designed for lengthy numerical simulations on a percolation problem in Statistical Mechanics of disordered media. The project that the computer is engaged on at present is intended to improve the true values of critical indices characteristic of the behavior of electrical conductivity at percolation threshold in a system of random resistors. The architecture is based on an efficient highly iterative algorithm to compute the electrical conductivity of random resistor networks. This computer runs programs of percolation problems considered 10 percent faster than the Cray X-MP with the same 64-bit floating-point precision. Operating since May 1987, months of calculation have already been performed. Although best suited to a class of algorithms, the processor includes a powerful 32-bit integer random number generator and has many characteristics of general purpose 64-bit floating-point microprogrammable computers that can run programs for various type of problems with a peak performance of more than 25 Mflops. This high computing speed is not the result of one all-powerful feature, but a balance among several factors including supercomputer derived features such as mainly: concurrent functional units separately controlled from independent microcode fields, distinct buses for data, addresses and instructions, flexible and powerful address generators for matrix processing and an advanced pipeline design implementing high performance VLSI Weitek's and Analog Devices components. (ERA citation 14:007156)