Slide 2 of 12
Notes:
The first PIM developed and deployed was the “Fridge” PIM. This unit was based on a proprietary configuration of standard components. The PIM was developed from the start to be a platform for deployed, mission-critical applications. Each of the four types of PC boards, the Boss (system control), Multiprocessor (MP), I/O board, and Global Memory (GM) were mounted on anodized plates with a patented thermal rubber pad. A Fridge PIM system could be configured with a minimum 512 processing cells, all the way up to 16,384 processing cells. Boards were held in a stainless steel, shielded enclosure that featured active cooling, 208V/3 phase DC power, and separate battery backup.
This early PIM ran at a fixed 60Hz frame rate. Sixty times a second, all processing cells would read from global memory, execute their code, and write the results back to global memory. Communication within the Fridge PIM occurred over the PIMbus, a high-speed, isolated bus designed for communication between MP, I/O, GM, and the Boss Board.
The development environment ran on a Macintosh workstation, and was connected to the PIM via a shared memory interface known as the Bus-Link™, Flavors’ original product line. This early PIM was installed at GM Truck & Bus, and was evaluated in applications at the Electric Power Research Institute and in Japan. This product is no longer sold.
