SPUR: A VLSI Multiprocessor Workstation

Mark Donald Hill, Susan J. Eggers, James Richard Larus, George S. Taylor, Glenn D. Adams, Bidyut Kumar Bose, Garth A. Gibson, Paul Mark Hansen, John Keller, Shing I. Kong, Corinna Grace Lee, Daebum Lee, J. M. Pendleton, Scott Allen Ritchie, David A. Wood, Benjamin G. Zorn, Paul N. Hilfinger, D. A. Hodges, Randy H. Katz, John K. Ousterhout and David A. Patterson

EECS Department
University of California, Berkeley
Technical Report No. UCB/CSD-86-273
December 1985

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1986/CSD-86-273.pdf

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.


BibTeX citation:

@techreport{Hill:CSD-86-273,
    Author = {Hill, Mark Donald and Eggers, Susan J. and Larus, James Richard and Taylor, George S. and Adams, Glenn D. and Bose, Bidyut Kumar and Gibson, Garth A. and Hansen, Paul Mark and Keller, John and Kong, Shing I. and Lee, Corinna Grace and Lee, Daebum and Pendleton, J. M. and Ritchie, Scott Allen and Wood, David A. and Zorn, Benjamin G. and Hilfinger, Paul N. and Hodges, D. A. and Katz, Randy H. and Ousterhout, John K. and Patterson, David A.},
    Title = {SPUR: A VLSI Multiprocessor Workstation},
    Institution = {EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley},
    Year = {1985},
    Month = {Dec},
    URL = {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1985/6083.html},
    Number = {UCB/CSD-86-273},
    Abstract = {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.}
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Report
%A Hill, Mark Donald
%A Eggers, Susan J.
%A Larus, James Richard
%A Taylor, George S.
%A Adams, Glenn D.
%A Bose, Bidyut Kumar
%A Gibson, Garth A.
%A Hansen, Paul Mark
%A Keller, John
%A Kong, Shing I.
%A Lee, Corinna Grace
%A Lee, Daebum
%A Pendleton, J. M.
%A Ritchie, Scott Allen
%A Wood, David A.
%A Zorn, Benjamin G.
%A Hilfinger, Paul N.
%A Hodges, D. A.
%A Katz, Randy H.
%A Ousterhout, John K.
%A Patterson, David A.
%T SPUR: A VLSI Multiprocessor Workstation
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 1985
%@ UCB/CSD-86-273
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1985/6083.html
%F Hill:CSD-86-273