Floating point system

VAX 11-70 with attached Floating Point Systems Array Processor... 

The final option considered involves the use of the TRW MPY-24 bit multiplier in conjunction with 2900 series bit-slice microprocessors in order to design a floating point unit from the ground up. This would result in a unit similar to the Floating Point Systems FPS-100 AFPP. The design principles for such an approach are well known, but somewhat time-consuming and... 

In order to gauge the results of the design exercise, both in terms of system performance and cost-effectiveness it is necessary to benchmark the MVP-9500 against other machines for which the benchmark figures are available Fortunately Floating Point systems have published details of a benchmark used to compare the AP120B with mini- and mainframe computer systems (6). 

We thank Dale L. Bodian and Brian K. Shoichet for their help. We thank the Computer Graphics Laboratory (supported by National Institutes of Health RR-01081) for use of their facilities for parts of this project. Partial support was received from the National Institutes of Health GM-31497 (IDK) GM-39552 (IDK), GM-07175 (GLS), and GM-29072 to Peter Kollman. The Floating Point Systems 264 array processor was purchased with grant support from National Science Foundation DMB-84-13762 and National Institutes of Health RR-02441. Assistance from the Macromolecular Workbench supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under contract N00014-86-K0757 administered by the Office of Naval Research is also appreciated. 

The appearance of numerous new computer vendors, including Floating Point Systems, Convex, Alliant, and Multiflow, meant that support and reliability of the software became a more significant issue. The public domain approach to distribution of the software did not provide a mechanism to ensure the correctness and reliability of versions for different machines, while the increasing variety of users made such validation more important than ever. Distribution through a university did not prove to be a viable mechanism for managing the relationships with the hardware vendors. 

Recently relatively cheap special purpose "attached processors" have become available, and this paper describes an evaluation which is being carried out at Cornell on the applicability of one such processor to large-scale scientific calculations such as the simulations described earlier. The particular machine is a Floating Point Systems 190-L Array Processor (AP). The AP features include ... 

After testing the AP random-number generator routine available in the Floating Point Systems Math Library, a random-number generator for a 28-bit mantissa architecture was written in FORTRAN and compiled on the APTRAN compiler. 

Floating Point Systems "AP 120-B Processor Handbook", 7259-02. Floating Point Systems, Beaverton, Oregon 1976. 

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