Engineering & Future
Desktop Supercomputer
Maryland Professor Creates Desktop Supercomputer
A prototype of what may be the next generation of personal computers has been developed by researchers in the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering. Capable of computing speeds 100 times faster than current desktops, the technology is based on parallel processing on a single chip.
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he prototype developed by Uzi Vishkin and his Clark School colleagues uses a circuit board about the size of a license plate on which they have mounted 64 parallel processors. To control those processors, they have developed the crucial parallel computer organization that allows the processors to work together and make programming practical and simple for software developers.
Parallel computing is likely to be key to the future of increases in computing power. The greatest challenge to making this happen is actually the software that will allow tasks to be split and processed in parallel - not the chip design itself. And in his work professor Vishkin is working on this aspect of the problem as well - even providing a prototype to Montgomery Blair High School that students are using to create and run programs.
Related: Dr. Uzi Vishkin - Introduction to Parallel Computing (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) - Teraflops chip points to future - Developing Applications For Parallel Computing
