Basic HTML version of Foils prepared 15 March 1996

Foil 7 Challenges and Status of Parallel Computing

From Complex Systems and Parallel Computing CPSP713 Case studies in Computational Science -- Spring Semester 1996. by Geoffrey C. Fox
Hardware trends imply that all computers (PC's--->Supercomputers) will be parallel by the year 2000
  • Up to now parallel computers are from small start-up companies (except Intel Supercomputer Division)
  • Recently Cray, Convex (HP), Digital, IBM have announced massively parallel computing initiatives
  • Several architectures "work" but only one : Distributed memory MIMD multicomputer is known to scale from one to very many processors on general problems
Software is challenge and could prevent/delay hardware trend that suggests parallelism will be a mainline computer architecture
  • first we must get systems software correct
  • then applications software

Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, npac@npac.syr.edu

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