2 - Approaches to Parallel Software Development

Summary

Parallel computation has been a physical reality for about two decades, and a major topic for research for at least half that time. However, given the whole spectrum of applications of computers, almost nothing is actually computed in parallel. In this chapter we suggest reasons why there is a great gap between the promise of parallel computing and the delivery of real parallel computations, and what can be done to close the gap.

The basic problem in parallel computation, we suggest, is the mismatch between the requirements of parallel software and the properties of the parallel computers on which it is executed. The gap between parallel software and hardware is a rapidly changing one because the lifespans of parallel architectures are measured in years, while a desirable lifespan for parallel software is measured in decades. The current standard way of dealing with this mismatch is to reengineer software every few years as each new parallel computer comes along. This is expensive, and as a result parallelism has only been heavily used in applications where other considerations outweigh the expense. This is mostly why the existing parallel processing community is so heavily oriented towards scientific and numerical applications – they are either funded by research institutions and are pushing the limits of what can be computed in finite time and space, or they are working on applications where performance is the only significant goal.