Experiences made with the Design and Development of a Message-Passing Kernel for a Dual-Processor-Node Parallel Computer

The paper presents the experiences made with the design and implementation of the Peace messagepassing kernel. Peace is the object-oriented parallel operating system developed for the Manna parallel computer. Manna is a dual-processor-node distributed-memory machine using crossbar technology for node interconnection. Performance figures of the Peace kernel configurations are presented and their implications with respect to communication latency hiding are discussed. 1 Introduction Between 1990 and 1994, the Manna project was conducted to design and develop a scalable distributed-memory parallel computer aimed at supporting the execution of parallel numerical and nonnumerical applications [5]. One of the Manna research systems is used as a testbed for Promoter [6]. The task of Promoter is the development of an integrated system consisting of an object-oriented programming language, a compiler and a runtime system particularly suited for the programming of massively parallel computers..