Terminal I/O for massively parallel systems

Abstract

To be useful, terminal I/O on massively parallel MIMD machines must be able to differentiate between the I/O streams from different tasks. This is done in the Vulcan terminal I/O facility by providing a special control panel, which allows an independent window to be opened for each task. The controls look like LEDs, being color coded to indicate status (e.g. output is available or the task is waiting for input). Additional LEDs are provided as a new form of output, allowing the application to report status visually rather than by using text output. This is useful during program development and debugging. A derivative of the devices reported here has been incorporated in the AIX Parallel Environment on the new IBM SP1 multicomputer.