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DIY 1980s "Non-Von" Supercomputer

Posted by kdawson on from the try-this-at-home dept.

Brietech writes "Ever wanted to own your own supercomputer? This guy recreated a 31-processor SIMD supercomputer from the early 1980s called the 'Non-Von 1' in an FPGA. It uses a 'Non-Von Neumann' architecture, and was intended for extremely fast database searches and artificial intelligence applications. Full-scale models were intended to have more than a million processors. It's a cool project for those interested in 'alternative' computer architectures, and yes, full source code (Verilog) is available, along with a python library to program it with." Hope the WIPO patent has expired.

3 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Neat... by kdawson+(3715) · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check this out...

    Article at /dev/null.

    Everything that you wanted to know and more. An interesting read.

  2. Virtualization vs Hardware vs Verilog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Folks just don't understand what FPGA's do.

    "So, that's neat and all but did I misunderstand something. His model doesn't seem that powerful unless he was using modern processors?"

    It's implemented in HARDWARE. Everything runs in parallel. To do the same on a "modern" processor, would require 300-400Mhz. A FPGA running at a [modest] 25Mhz could get the same or better performance.

    "I can't help but wonder if this couldn't be emulated for a fraction of the price. Are there any virtualization systems out there that could accomplish what this guy did? I imagine something along the lines of GNS3 might work..."

    FPGA's are cheap. A Spartan-3 board can be had for 100-200, and probably hold 2-3 32 node cpu's.

    Programmers just don't understand the difference between say verilog, and C/C++/Java.

    verilog is the basic building block of CPU's. Everything is done in PARALLEL by default, while in C++/Java everything is done SERIALLY.

  3. Offtopic trip down memory lane by clary · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I got a chance to use a Connection Machine (real, not emulated) in the late 1980s, just a couple of years out of college. It was an internal R&D project for a defense contractor, porting a computational fluid dynamics program I didn't understand from Cray vectorized Fortran to the CM's *Lisp. Fun stuff.

    I even got a chance to visit Thinking Machines headquarters in Boston, and hear Danny Hillis speak. Here he was speaking to a room full of suits, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt. I remember thinking at the time that being able to do that was quite an indicator of success.

    Yeah, yeah, I know...offtopic, overrated, etc. So mod me down if you must. (Or is that just reverse psychology on you moderators? Muhahaha!)

    --

    "Rub her feet." -- L.L.