Technology
The KSR systems ran a specially customized version of the OSF/1 operating system, a Unix variant, with programs compiled by a KSR-specific port of the Greenhills C and FORTRAN compilers. The architecture was shared memory implemented as an cache only memory architecture or "COMA". Being all cache, memory dynamically migrated and replicated in a coherent manner based on access pattern of individual processors. The processors were arranged in a hierarchy of rings, and the operating system mediated process migration and device access. Instruction decode was hardwired, and pipelining was used. Each KSR1 processor was a custom 64-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) CPU clocked at 20 MHz and capable of peak output of 20 million instructions per second (MIPS) and 40 million floating-point operations per second (MFLOPS). Up to 1088 of these processors could be arranged in a single system, with a minimum of eight. The KSR2 doubled the clock rate to 40 MHz and supported over 5000 processors. The KSR-1 chipset was fabricated by Sharp Corporation while the KSR-2 chipset was built by Hewlett-Packard.
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Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)