Modern parallel computers offer parallel disk systems, which will allow many applications to match the high compute performance of Figure 2 with scaling disk I/O (input/output) performance. The software and methodology for accessing these parallel disks is still rudimentary and more experience is needed to develop this. Particularly interesting is the multicomputers with initial availability on the nCUBE and Meiko systems.
Parallel debuggers are available, and these are clear extensions from the sequential environment for the data parallel applications that dominate science and engineering simulations. Monitoring and evaluation of the performance of the computer is particularly important for parallel machines as it can signal poor decomposition and other inhibitors to good use of the machine. Another new software tool will automatically decompose and distribute problems over the nodes of a parallel machine. This has been demonstrated, but not yet implemented as a robust portable tool.