Parallel processing
<parallel> The simultaneous use of more than one computer to solve a problem.
There are many different kinds of parallel computer (or "parallel processor").
They are distinguished by the kind of interconnection between processors (known as "processing elements" or PEs) and between processors and memory.
Flynn's taxonomy also classifies parallel (and serial) computers according to whether all processors execute the same instructions at the same time ("
single instruction/multiple data" - SIMD) or each processor executes different instructions ("
multiple instruction/multiple data" - MIMD).
The processors may either communicate in order to be able to cooperate in solving a problem or they may run completely independently, possibly under the control of another processor which distributes work to the others and collects results from them (a "
processor farm").
The difficulty of cooperative problem solving is aptly demonstrated by the following dubious reasoning:
If it takes one man one minute to dig a post-hole then sixty men can dig it in one second.
Amdahl's Law states this more formally.
Processors communicate via some kind of network or bus or a combination of both.
Memory may be either
shared memory (all processors have equal access to all memory) or private (each processor has its own memory - "
distributed memory") or a combination of both.
A huge number of software systems have been designed for programming parallel computers, both at the
operating system and programming language level.
These systems must provide mechanisms for partitioning the overall problem into separate tasks and allocating tasks to processors.
Such mechanisms may provide either
implicit parallelism - the system (the
compiler or some other program) partitions the problem and allocates tasks to processors automatically or
explicit parallelism where the programmer must annotate his program to show how it is to be partitioned.
It is also usual to provide synchronisation primitives such as semaphores and monitors to allow processes to share resources without conflict.
Load balancing attempts to keep all processors busy by allocating new tasks, or by moving existing tasks, according to some
algorithm.
Communication between tasks may be either via
shared memory or
message passing.
Either may be implemented in terms of the other and in fact, at the lowest level, shared memory uses message passing since the address and data signals which flow between processor and memory may be considered as messages.
See also
cellular automaton.
Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.parallel.
Institutions (http://www.ccsf.caltech.edu/other_sites.html), research groups (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~scandal/research-groups.html).
