Reply-to: gcf@npac.syr.edu To: robinson, hawick Subject: For PCW Date: Sat, 11 Mar 95 22:34:34 EST From: gcf Here (see file ~gcf/pcw.htm) is an HTML file to be placed at start of PCW as overall summary Note I have NOT put in correct HREF's -- hope you can do this. All abbreviations (such as MP DP) are defined in notes for annotations to PCW. Others should be self explanatory What is Contained in Parallel Computing Works?

What is Contained in Parallel Computing Works?


We briefly describe the contents of this book

Applications

The heart of this work is a set of applications largely developed at Caltech from 1985-1990 by the Caltech Concurrent Computation Group. These are linked to a set of tables and Glossaries

Applications are classified into 5 problem classes:

Synchronous Applications
Such applications tend to be regular and characterised by algorithms employing simultaneous identical updates to a set of points
Loosely Synchronous Applications
Such applications are iterative or time-stepped but unlike the synchronous case, employ different evolution(update) procedures which synchronize macroscopically
Embarrassingly Parallel Applications
Such applications can employ complex algorithms but can be parallelized because the evolution of different points is largely independent
Asynchronous Problems
These are hard to parallelize problems with no natural algorithmic synchronization between the evolution of linked irregular data points
Metaproblems
Such problems are hybrid integration of several subproblems of the other four basic application classes

Overview

This collection of over 40 succesful parallel applications is woven into a discussion of other key features of HPCC


Software Systems and Tools


Algorithmic Technologies

Major topics include:

Geoffrey Fox gcf@npac.syr.edu, http://www.npac.syr.edu Phone 3154432163 (Npac central 3154431723) Fax 3154434741