Vectors: How the Old Became New Again in Supercomputing
Vector instructions, once a powerful performance innovation of supercomputing in the 1970s and 1980s became an obsolete technology in the 1990s. But like the mythical phoenix bird, vector instructions have arisen from the ashes. Here is the history of a technology that went from new to old then back to new.
But first, a few definitions. A vector instruction is an SIMD instruction, Single Instruction Multiple Data. A vector instruction refers to vector registers where multiple data resides. Read more…
Tiffany Trader
John Russell
George Leopold
Thomas Sterling, Ph.D
Bill Gropp, Ph.D
James Reinders
Gary Johnson
Michael Wolfe
