[comp.arch] Thinking about parallelism

eugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene Miya N.) (12/29/87)

Just a short message:

Marty mentions parallel hardware and programmability.
>In article <76700007@uiucdcsp> johnson@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>>
>>Even though this is comp.arch, I will argue that the real problem in
>>building parallel systems is finding the parallel algorithms to run on them.
>
>I agree.  There is also another problem which has to do with
>theoretical understanding of computational complexity.  Algorithm
> . . .
>It seems to me that some useful work could be done in putting together
>an algorithm complexity model which would be useful for dealing with a
>multiple processor application. . .

There is a recent book by Leah Jamieson et al on this.  If you need a
reference let me know.
Before you blame hardware, software or algorithms, the folks at LLNL and
LANL have a nice triangular symbol with all three topics (sort of like
the "fire triangle") where you need all three components to achieve
parallelism (or fire).  I think Minsky is quoted somewhere as "thinking
in threes."

From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
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