Parallel Computers 2

Since the publication of the first edition, parallel computing technology has gained considerable momentum. A large proportion of this has come from the improvement in VLSI techniques, offering one to two orders of magnitude more devices than previously possible. A second contributing factor in the fast development of the subject is commercialization. The supercomputer is no longer restricted to a few well-established research institutions and large companies. A new computer breed combining the architectural advantages of the supercomputer with the advance of VLSI technology is now available at very attractive prices. A pioneering device in this development is the transputer, a VLSI processor specifically designed to operate in large concurrent systems. Parallel Computers 2: Architecture, Programming and Algorithms reflects the shift in emphasis of parallel computing and tracks the development of supercomputers in the years since the first edition was published. It looks at large-scale parallelism as found in transputer ensembles. This extensively rewritten second edition includes major new sections on the transputer and the OCCAM language. The book contains specific information on the various types of machines available, details of computer architecture and technologies, and descriptions of programming languages and algorithms. Aimed at an advanced undergraduate and postgraduate level, this handbook is also useful for research workers, machine designers, and programmers concerned with parallel computers. In addition, it will serve as a guide for potential parallel computer users, especially in disciplines where large amounts of computer time are regularly used.

This is the extensively rewritten second edition of the highly successful book by Professor Hockney and Dr Jesshope. Since the publication of the first edition, parallel computing technology has gained considerable momentum - a large proportion of this has come from the improvement in VLSI techniques, offering one to two orders of magnitude more devices than previously possible. A second factor contributing to the fast development of the subject is commercialisation. The supercomputer is no longer restricted to a few well-established research institutions and large companies. A new computer breed combining the architectural advantages of the supercomputer with the advances in VLSI technology is now available at very attractive prices. A pioneering device in this development is the transputer - a VLSI processor specifically designed to operate in large concurrent systems. Parallel Computers 2 reflects the shift in emphasis of parallel computing and tracks the development of supercomputers in the years since the first edition was published. It looks at the latest generation of pipelined vector computers (Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, CRAY-2, ETA1), as well as large-scale parallelism, as found in transputer ensembles for example. Major new sections on the transputer and the OCCAM language are included. The book contains specific information on the various types of machines available, details of computer architecture and technologies, and descriptions of programming languages and algorithms. Parallel Computers 2 is aimed at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate level, but will be equally useful as a handbook for research workers, machine designers and programmers concerned with parallel computers. It will serve as a guide for potential parallel computer users, especially in disciplines where large amounts of computer time are regularly used. Book jacket.

A clear illustration of how parallel computers can be successfully applied to large-scale scientific computations. This book demonstrates how a variety of applications in physics, biology, mathematics and other sciences were implemented on real parallel computers to produce new scientific results. It investigates issues of fine-grained parallelism relevant for future supercomputers with particular emphasis on hypercube architecture. The authors describe how they used an experimental approach to configure different massively parallel machines, design and implement basic system software, and develop algorithms for frequently used mathematical computations. They also devise performance models, measure the performance characteristics of several computers, and create a high-performance computing facility based exclusively on parallel computers. By addressing all issues involved in scientific problem solving, Parallel Computing Works! provides valuable insight into computational science for large-scale parallel architectures. For those in the sciences, the findings reveal the usefulness of an important experimental tool. Anyone in supercomputing and related computational fields will gain a new perspective on the potential contributions of parallelism. Includes over 30 full-color illustrations.

The book provides a practical guide to computational scientists and engineers to help advance their research by exploiting the superpower of supercomputers with many processors and complex networks. This book focuses on the design and analysis of basic parallel algorithms, the key components for composing larger packages for a wide range of applications.

After an introduction to basic concepts, succeeding chapters concentrate on manufacturers producing vector supercomputers, SIMD computers, shared memory multiprocessors, hypercubes, and transputer-based machines. Each section describes a single manufacturer, detailing its history and company profile.

This book outlines a set of issues that are critical to all of parallel architecture--communication latency, communication bandwidth, and coordination of cooperative work (across modern designs). It describes the set of techniques available in hardware and in software to address each issues and explore how the various techniques interact.

In 2008 the Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing left the USA to celebrate its 21st anninversary in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Following its long-established tradition, the workshop focused on topics at the frontierofresearchanddevelopmentinlanguages,optimizingcompilers,appli- tions, and programming models for high-performance computing. While LCPC continues to focus on parallel computing, the 2008 edition included the pres- tation of papers on program analysis that are precursors of high performance in parallel environments. LCPC 2008 received 35 paper submissions. Eachpaper received at least three independent reviews, and then the papers and the referee comments were d- cussed during a Program Committee meeting. The PC decided to accept 18 papers as regular papers and 6 papers as short papers. The short papers appear at the end of this volume. The LCPC 2008 program was fortunate to include two keynote talks. Keshav Pingali’s talk titled “Amorphous Data Parallelism in Irregular Programs” - gued that irregular programs have data parallelism in the iterative processing of worklists. Pingali described the Galois system developed at The University of Texas at Austin to exploit this kind of amorphous data parallelism. The second keynote talk, “Generic ParallelAlgorithms in Threading Building Bocks (TBB),” presented by Arch Robison from Intel Corporation addressed very practical aspects of using TBB, a production C++ library, for generic p- allel programming and contrasted TBB with the Standard Template Library (STL).