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What Is Massively Parallel Computing, and Why Is It Important?

Explains what massively parallel computing is and why it is important to understand the effects it will have on life in the near future. Home robots and virtual worlds; Historical importance of Eli Whitney and the invention of the cotton gin; Reference to the fact that massively parallel computers a...

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Published in:Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Vol. 121; no. 1; pp. 1 - 16
Main Author: Hills, W. Daniel
Format: Article
Published: MIT Press Winter92
Subjects:
Computers & civilization
Parallel computers
Data pipelining
Computers
Cotton gins & ginning
Whitney, Eli, 1765-1825
Virtual machine systems
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:Explains what massively parallel computing is and why it is important to understand the effects it will have on life in the near future. Home robots and virtual worlds; Historical importance of Eli Whitney and the invention of the cotton gin; Reference to the fact that massively parallel computers are scalable in that it is always possible to build a more powerful machine by simply adding more processors; Pipelining, functional parallelism, and data parallelism; Description of communication as the most difficult part of parallel computation; More.