Friday, December 25, 2015

Parallel Computing

Parallel computing is collection of processing elements that communicate and co-operate to solve large problems fast. It is the use of two or more processors (cores, computers) in combination to solve a single problem.

Examples of Parallel System:
An example of parallel computing would be two servers that share the workload of routing mail, managing connections to an accounting system or database, solving a mathematical problem etc. Supercomputers are usually placed in parallel system architecture, Terminals connected to single server.

Advantages of Parallel System:
They provide concurrency, help in taking advantage of non-local resources, It is cost saving.
It is overcoming memory constraints. It saves time and money. It has global address space which provides a user-friendly programming perspective to memory.

Disadvantages of Parallel System:
Primary disadvantage is the lack of scalability between memory and CPUs.
Programmer responsibility for synchronization constructs that ensure "correct" access of global memory.
It becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to design and produce shared memory machines with ever increasing numbers of processors.

Types of Parallel Computing:
·         Data-parallel: Same operations on different data. It is also called SIMD.
·         SPMD: Same program, different data.
MIMD: Different programs, different data

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Arslan ud Din Shafiq
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
CS Department

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