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Parralel Computing Turorial |
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Written by Hemanshu Patel
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Sunday, 23 December 2007 |
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Page 2 of 18
OverviewWhy Use Parallel Computing?
* The primary reasons for using parallel computing:
o Save time - wall clock time
o Solve larger problems
o Provide concurrency (do multiple things at the same time)
* Other reasons might include:
o Taking advantage of non-local resources - using available compute resources on a wide area network, or even the Internet when local compute resources are scarce.
o Cost savings - using multiple "cheap" computing resources instead of paying for time on a supercomputer.
o Overcoming memory constraints - single computers have very finite memory resources. For large problems, using the memories of multiple computers may overcome this obstacle.
* Limits to serial computing - both physical and practical reasons pose significant constraints to simply building ever faster serial computers:
o Transmission speeds - the speed of a serial computer is directly dependent upon how fast data can move through hardware. Absolute limits are the speed of light (30 cm/nanosecond) and the transmission limit of copper wire (9 cm/nanosecond). Increasing speeds necessitate increasing proximity of processing elements.
o Limits to miniaturization - processor technology is allowing an increasing number of transistors to be placed on a chip. However, even with molecular or atomic-level components, a limit will be reached on how small components can be.
o Economic limitations - it is increasingly expensive to make a single processor faster. Using a larger number of moderately fast commodity processors to achieve the same (or better) performance is less expensive.
* The future: during the past 10 years, the trends indicated by ever faster networks, distributed systems, and multi-processor computer architectures (even at the desktop level) suggest that parallelism is the future of computing.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 23 December 2007 )
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Technology 