Managing a Massively-Parallel Resource-Constrained Computing Architecture

Cameron Patterson, Thomas Preston, Francesco Galluppi and Steve Furber

Abstract

One approach to creating a massively-parallel high-performance machine is to use large quantities of power-efficient processors, primarily due to the energy consumption of conventional high-performance computing designs. SpiNNaker is a novel high-performance architecture formed by large numbers of highly-interconnected low-power processing elements, more typically found in embedded systems. This paper presents the results of the implementation of a low-overhead management framework enabled by a universal translation layer: SpiNNmate. SpiNNmate is located between a SpiNNaker machine and the communication protocols of external applications, and we include results from a translation of the standards-based SNMP protocol to SpiNNaker.