SPUR (Symbolic Processing Using RISCs) is a workstation for conducting parallel processing research. SPUR contains 6 to 12 high-performance homogeneous processors connected with a shared bus. The number of processors is large enough to permit parallel processing experiments, but small enough to allow packaging as a personal workstation. The restricted processor count also allows us to build powerful RISC processors, which include support for Lisp and IEEE floating-point, at reasonable cost. This paper presents a specification of SPUR and the results of some early architectural experiments. SPUR features include a large virtually-tagged cache, address translation without a translation buffer, LISP support with datatype tags but without microcode, multiple cache consistency in hardware, and an IEEE floating-point coprocessor without microcode.
Title
SPUR: A VLSI Multiprocessor Workstation
Published
1985-12-01
Full Collection Name
Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences Technical Reports
Other Identifiers
CSD-86-273
Type
Text
Extent
29 p
Archive
The Engineering Library
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