The Nodes of APE100 form a three dimensional grid. We have tried to pack as many processing nodes as possible on a single board.
A structure of 8 nodes, arranged as a 2*2*2 cube is the most convenient such configuration, since it fully retains the simmetry of the larger machine. A processing board (PB) contains eight floating point units, their memory banks and the network interface circuitry.
Larger machines consist of a larger number of nodes (i.e. several PB). A "Tubo" machine is made of 128 nodes and the whole Ape100 machine consists of 2048 nodes.
In every configuration we put periodic boundary conditions: the node on the opposite faces are linked together.
Ape
Collaboration