...in 1988 a group of scientists at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH: Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) applied for a grant to buy a massively parallel computer. A driving force behind the application was the belief that massive parallelism will become an important technology both in computer science and high-performance computing.
Equally important, there was a need for the performance that could be delivered by such an architecture. The computer market was surveyed and it was decided that Thinking Machines Corporation (TMC) o ffered the best choice with its Connection Machine system, CM2. Money was granted and during the fall of 1989 TMC installed an 8K Connection Machine CM2 at KTH.
At this time the idea came up to group together resources and activities around the CM2 and already existing parallel computers. Thus, what was to be called the Center for Parallel Computers was formed and inaugurated by Janne Carlsson, the President of KTH, on January 15, 1990. In January 1991 PDC applied for an upgrade of the CM2 to a CM200. The application was successful and the upgrade was installed in December 1991.
Computers through PDC's history
Over the years PDC has had several high-ranking systems in the TOP500 list, which lists the 500 most powerful computer systems that are publically known about in the world. The table below highlights some of PDC's major systems and their ranking. For a detailed list, visit
PDC's TOP500 entry.
The PDC Progress Reports chronicled developments at PDC from 1990-2003. PDF versions of the reports are available below for historical interest. Please note that some of the reports may be missing figures which were not available in electronic form.
