Assignment Problems In Parallel And Distributed Computing

This book has been written for practitioners, researchers and stu dents in the fields of parallel and distributed computing. Its objective is to provide detailed coverage of the applications of graph theoretic tech niques to the problems of matching resources and requirements in multi ple computer systems. There has been considerable research in this area over the last decade and intense work continues even as this is being written. For the practitioner, this book serves as a rich source of solution techniques for problems that are routinely encountered in the real world. Algorithms are presented in sufficient detail to permit easy implementa tion; background material and fundamental concepts are covered in full. The researcher will find a clear exposition of graph theoretic tech niques applied to parallel and distributed computing. Research results are covered and many hitherto unpublished spanning the last decade results by the author are included. There are many unsolved problems in this field-it is hoped that this book will stimulate further research.

This book contains papers presented at the Workshop on Parallel Processing of Discrete Optimization Problems held at DIMACS in April 1994. The contents cover a wide spectrum of the most recent algorithms and applications in parallel processing of discrete optimization and related problems. Topics include parallel branch and bound algorithms, scalability, load balancing, parallelism and irregular data structures and scheduling task graphs on parallel machines. Applications include parallel algorithms for solving satisfiability problems, location problems, linear programming, quadratic and linear assignment problems. This book would be suitable as a textbook in advanced courses on parallel algorithms and combinatorial optimization.

The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) was introduced in 1957 by Koopmans and Beckmann to model a plant location problem. Since then the QAP has been object of numerous investigations by mathematicians, computers scientists, ope- tions researchers and practitioners. Nowadays the QAP is widely considered as a classical combinatorial optimization problem which is (still) attractive from many points of view. In our opinion there are at last three main reasons which make the QAP a popular problem in combinatorial optimization. First, the number of re- life problems which are mathematically modeled by QAPs has been continuously increasing and the variety of the fields they belong to is astonishing. To recall just a restricted number among the applications of the QAP let us mention placement problems, scheduling, manufacturing, VLSI design, statistical data analysis, and parallel and distributed computing. Secondly, a number of other well known c- binatorial optimization problems can be formulated as QAPs. Typical examples are the traveling salesman problem and a large number of optimization problems in graphs such as the maximum clique problem, the graph partitioning problem and the minimum feedback arc set problem. Finally, from a computational point of view the QAP is a very difficult problem. The QAP is not only NP-hard and - hard to approximate, but it is also practically intractable: it is generally considered as impossible to solve (to optimality) QAP instances of size larger than 20 within reasonable time limits.

The contributions of a diverse selection of international hardware and software specialists are assimilated in this book's exploration of the development of massively parallel processing (MPP). The emphasis is placed on industrial applications and collaboration with users and suppliers from within the industrial community consolidates the scope of the publication. From a practical point of view, massively parallel data processing is a vital step to further innovation in all areas where large amounts of data must be processed in parallel or in a distributed manner, e.g. fluid dynamics, meteorology, seismics, molecular engineering, image processing, parallel data base processing. MPP technology can make the speed of computation higher and substantially reduce the computational costs. However, to achieve these features, the MPP software has to be developed further to create user-friendly programming systems and to become transparent for present-day computer software. Application of novel electro-optic components and devices is continuing and will be a key for much more general and powerful architectures. Vanishing of communication hardware limitations will result in the elimination of programming bottlenecks in parallel data processing. Standardization of the functional characteristics of a programming model of massively parallel computers will become established. Then efficient programming environments can be developed. The result will be a widespread use of massively parallel processing systems in many areas of application.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of 10 international workshops held in conjunction with the merged 1998 IPPS/SPDP symposia, held in Orlando, Florida, US in March/April 1998. The volume comprises 118 revised full papers presenting cutting-edge research or work in progress. In accordance with the workshops covered, the papers are organized in topical sections on reconfigurable architectures, run-time systems for parallel programming, biologically inspired solutions to parallel processing problems, randomized parallel computing, solving combinatorial optimization problems in parallel, PC based networks of workstations, fault-tolerant parallel and distributed systems, formal methods for parallel programming, embedded HPC systems and applications, and parallel and distributed real-time systems.

Future requirements for computing speed, system reliability, and cost-effectiveness entail the development of alternative computers to replace the traditional von Neumann organization. As computing networks come into being, one of the latest dreams is now possible - distributed computing. Distributed computing brings transparent access to as much computer power and data as the user needs for accomplishing any given task - simultaneously achieving high performance and reliability. The subject of distributed computing is diverse, and many researchers are investigating various issues concerning the structure of hardware and the design of distributed software. Distributed System Design defines a distributed system as one that looks to its users like an ordinary system, but runs on a set of autonomous processing elements (PEs) where each PE has a separate physical memory space and the message transmission delay is not negligible. With close cooperation among these PEs, the system supports an arbitrary number of processes and dynamic extensions. Distributed System Design outlines the main motivations for building a distributed system, including: inherently distributed applications performance/cost resource sharing flexibility and extendibility availability and fault tolerance scalability Presenting basic concepts, problems, and possible solutions, this reference serves graduate students in distributed system design as well as computer professionals analyzing and designing distributed/open/parallel systems. Chapters discuss: the scope of distributed computing systems general distributed programming languages and a CSP-like distributed control description language (DCDL) expressing parallelism, interprocess communication and synchronization, and fault-tolerant design two approaches describing a distributed system: the time-space view and the interleaving view mutual exclusion and related issues, including election, bidding, and self-stabilization prevention and detection of deadlock reliability, safety, and security as well as various methods of handling node, communication, Byzantine, and software faults efficient interprocessor communication mechanisms as well as these mechanisms without specific constraints, such as adaptiveness, deadlock-freedom, and fault-tolerance virtual channels and virtual networks load distribution problems synchronization of access to shared data while supporting a high degree of concurrency

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Advances in Parallel, Distributed Computing Technologies and Applications, PDCTA 2011, held in Tirunelveli, India, in September 2011. The 64 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from over 400 submissions. Providing an excellent international forum for sharing knowledge and results in theory, methodology and applications of parallel, distributed computing the papers address all current issues in this field with special focus on algorithms and applications, computer networks, cyber trust and security, wireless networks, as well as mobile computing and bioinformatics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of 11 IPPS/SPDP '98 Workshops held in conjunction with the 13th International Parallel Processing Symposium and the 10th Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing in San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA in April 1999. The 126 revised papers presented were carefully selected from a wealth of papers submitted. The papers are organised in topical sections on biologically inspired solutions to parallel processing problems: High-Level Parallel Programming Models and Supportive Environments; Biologically Inspired Solutions to Parallel Processing; Parallel and Distributed Real-Time Systems; Run-Time Systems for Parallel Programming; Reconfigurable Architectures; Java for Parallel and Distributed Computing; Optics and Computer Science; Solving Irregularly Structured Problems in Parallel; Personal Computer Based Workstation Networks; Formal Methods for Parallel Programming; Embedded HPC Systems and Applications.