HPC Survey - Credits and Acknowledgments

This project initiated as a paper survey carried out for the UK Home Office when I managed the Numerical Simulations Group at Edinburgh Parallel Computing Center in Scotland. My group collected brochures from manufacturers and toured several of their sites collecting information and playing with machines. After I arrived to work for Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University it became clear that no complete survey of all the HPC systems existed and that it would be useful to put one together as a hypertext resource.

Many people have contributed to the information presented here, in particular Jack Dongarra and Iain Duff kindly allowed me to use the results of a similar paper survey they undertook some years ago - this has been invaluable for the more obscure platforms that were known in the USA but not in Europe. Geoffrey Fox has not only provided me with the resources to write this survey, but has helped dig up some of the information from his own records. A great deal of information originates in the database assembled at Edinburgh and thanks are due to David Wallace for supporting that original project.

Thanks are also due to all the systems manufacturers who have supplied me with information on their products. I have tried to be as objective as possible in representing this information - although some personal prejudices and comments have crept in here or there.

Finally - special thanks to the original members of the Numerical Simulations Group - Brian Wylie, Evan Welsh, Simon Chapple, Mark Sawyer, Alan Thompson and indeed to all those mentioned above and also to colleagues at Edinburgh and Syracuse - almost too numerous to mention.

I would of course welcome any comments, suggested revisions, further data or contributed entries or news of new vendors' WWW sites that could be cross linked to the entries in the survey.