Efficient approaches for constructing a massively parallel processing system

How to construct a massively parallel processing system has drawn a lot of attention. An important feature affecting the performance and characteristics of the architecture with an interconnection of multiple processors is its configuration design and scalability of the system. Good performance of a parallel application is often the result of an appropriate match between the processes of the parallel application and the configuration of multiple processor system. In order to accommodate different parallel applications, it is highly desirable that the configuration of the architecture and the number of processors can be modified easily and extended flexibly. Two efficient technical approaches for constructing a massively parallel processing system with scalability are proposed. One is based on multilayered mother-boards and the other on crossbar switches. The technique and the two approaches have been adapted in a real-life application which is a parallel implementation of backpropagation neural computation. Performance evaluation for the two approaches is included. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.