Computing and Microelectronics Systems
The Computing Systems Thrust does multidisciplinary research within the NSF Engineering Research Center at MSU. The Center's strategic objectives emphasize the intimate relationship that must exist between software and hardware when considering the execution of complex field simulation (CFS) computations on parallel and distributed architectures.
The projects within this group require a wide range of expertise, from algorithm optimization to hardware design. Research areas include:
- the exploration of the potential of an active memory hierarchy for CFS by integrating blocking and code prefetching strategies with data handling and computational hardware
- the design and development of performance monitor-based parallel machines
- the investigation of non-traditional architectures of CFS acceleration
- the development of parallel system designs supporting CFS using distributed systems of heterogeneous workstations
A major project entitled "SuperMSPARC: A Parallel Computing
Development System" is a 32-processor multicomputer which
features hardware-assisted performance monitoring. This machine is used
to unobtrusively analyze and optimize parallel scientific computations
and provide insight into parallel computer architectures.
