Converting an existing computer code to a hypercube computer

Abstract

The authors describe the utilization of SYREL, a computer program which finds the upper and lower bounds on the reliability indices for an electric utility system. It tests a list of contingencies for violations of line loadings or voltage limits, and then uses the results from that to compute the reliability indices by a tree search. These two parts of the program have been modified to run on a hypercube computer. A major change that had to be made in the program in order to utilize the capability of the hypercube was to move the storage of the contingency evaluation results that would be used in the tree enumeration from the disk to the large memory available in each node. A commercial unit, the iPSC/1-MXD4, was used in the program development. A later and more powerful model, the iPSC/2, became available for testing at the end of the project, and test results on it are included.<>