Models for Parallel and Distributed Computation: Theory, Algorithmic Techniques and Applications

✍ Scribed by Michel Cosnard (auth.), Ricardo Corrêa, Inês Dutra, Mario Fiallos, Fernando Gomes (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 334
• Series: Applied Optimization 67
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Parallel and distributed computation has been gaining a great lot of attention in the last decades. During this period, the advances attained in computing and communication technologies, and the reduction in the costs of those technolo­ gies, played a central role in the rapid growth of the interest in the use of parallel and distributed computation in a number of areas of engineering and sciences. Many actual applications have been successfully implemented in various plat­ forms varying from pure shared-memory to totally distributed models, passing through hybrid approaches such as distributed-shared memory architectures. Parallel and distributed computation differs from dassical sequential compu­ tation in some of the following major aspects: the number of processing units, independent local dock for each unit, the number of memory units, and the programming model. For representing this diversity, and depending on what level we are looking at the problem, researchers have proposed some models to abstract the main characteristics or parameters (physical components or logical mechanisms) of parallel computers. The problem of establishing a suitable model is to find a reasonable trade-off among simplicity, power of expression and universality. Then, be able to study and analyze more precisely the behavior of parallel applications.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xx
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Introduction to the Complexity of Parallel Algorithms....Pages 3-25
The Combinatorics of Resource Sharing....Pages 27-52
Solving the Static Task Scheduling Problem for Real Machines....Pages 53-84
Predictable Parallel Performance: The BSP Model....Pages 85-115
Discrete Computing with Coarse Grained Parallel Systems: An Algorithmic Approach....Pages 117-143
Front Matter....Pages 145-145
Parallel Graph Algorithms for Coarse-Grained Multicomputers....Pages 147-178
Parallel Metaheuristics for Combinatorial Optimization....Pages 179-206
Parallelism in Logic Programming and Scheduling Issues....Pages 207-241
Parallel Asynchronous Team Algorithms....Pages 243-277
Parallel Numerical Methods for Differential Equations....Pages 279-313
Back Matter....Pages 315-323

✦ Subjects

Theory of Computation; Discrete Mathematics in Computer Science; Combinatorics; Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation