The Architecture of High Performance Computers, Vol.2

This volume deals with machines which are explictly parallel in nature and concentrates on the architecture of systems in which a number of processors operate in concert to achieve high performance. Volume 1, essentially deals with architectures in which parallelism is used to
attain high performance but is hidden from the programmer, and where the high performance structures are naturally applicable to the design of the elements within parallel processors. This volume represents an historical progression from that, describing some architectures and machines which have evolved recently and could be described as state-of-the-art. The authors have attempted to extract the fundamental principles of high performance architectures and set them in perspective with case studies. The two volume set is designed to accompany undergraduate courses in computer architecture and constitute a core of material presented in third and fourth year courses in the Computer Science Department at Edinburgh University.