Basic HTML version of Foils prepared 24 August 98

Foil 55 What is Parallel Architecture?

From Master Foilset for CPS615 Introduction -- Material from Culler and Koelbel Computational Science for Simulations -- Fall Semester 1998. by Geoffrey C. Fox, Nancy McCracken
A parallel computer is any old collection of processing elements that cooperate to solve large problems fast
  • from a pile of PC's to a shared memory multiprocessor
Some broad issues:
  • Resource Allocation:
    • how large a collection?
    • how powerful are the elements?
    • how much memory?
  • Data access, Communication and Synchronization
    • how do the elements cooperate and communicate?
    • how are data transmitted between processors?
    • what are the abstractions and primitives for cooperation?
  • Performance and Scalability
    • how does it all translate into performance?
    • how does it scale?

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