Edinburgh Configurable Optical LAN Environment

ECOLE is a project concerned with the implementation of highly efficient parallel computation on a network of generic workstations connected by a very high speed optical LAN. A holistic approach to system design is taken, to identify possible hardware and software improvements that might allow a workstation to harness fully the raw capacity of a multi-gigabit network. Two important features of the work are the inclusion of configurable hardware and the use of active protocols - both of these are to introduce overall flexibility, without compromising efficiency by more than a small amount. The work benefits from the use of advanced techniques for modelling and simulation of experimental architectures. These pages explain how the ECOLE project acts as a very practical focus for several existing lines of advanced systems research being undertaken at the University of Edinburgh.

• Rob Pooley ( Heriot-Watt)
• Gordon Brebner
• David Rees
• Tim Hopkins
• Vincent Humbert ( Heriot-Watt)
• Julian Lucek ( British Telecom)
• David Cotter ( British Telecom)

• Gordon Brebner and Rob Pooley, "ECOLE: A Configurable Environment for a Local Optical Network of Workstations", Dec 1997. (Also available as a 40Kb gzipped Postscript file).
• Gordon Brebner, Steve Cusack, Tim Hopkins and Rob Pooley, "Interfacing Networks of Workstations with the "Fastest LAN in the World" - A Work in Progress Report", Feb 1998. (Also available as a 36Kb gzipped Postscript file).

• Information on the Intel Accelerated Graphic Port (AGP) specification.

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