Computing encyclopedia surveys concepts behind shift to parallelism

University of Illinois computer science professor David Padua served as Editor-in-Chief for a new encyclopedic effort to survey the concepts behind the significant shift towards parallel computing in today’s computer industry.

The 4-volume Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing contains more than 300 entries on topics related to the critical demand for continued advances in parallel programming. Contributors to the effort were leading international experts in the field, including Illinois computer science professors William Gropp and Marc Snir, professor emeritus David J. Kuck, and Jack Dongarra, Michael Flynn, David E. Shaw, and Guy L. Steele Jr. among others.

“Parallel computing has already impacted or will soon impact everyone who uses a computing device, from supercomputers to laptops, tablets, and smart phones,” said Padua.
 
Today’s supercomputers are massively parallel machines with thousands of processors. The fastest supercomputer today uses 705,024 processing cores, capable of 10.51 quadrillion calculations per second. Ten years ago the world’s fastest supercomputer used a total of 8,192 processing cores and was only capable of 12.3 trillion calculations per second, almost one thousand times less powerful. This type of accelerated parallelism is critical to science and engineering, enabling discoveries and designs that would not be possible otherwise. For consumer and mobile devices, parallelism is the only viable strategy for continued performance gains, while also allowing chipmakers to optimize for energy efficiency.

With the need for parallelism at an all-time high, the Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing provides researchers and developers with an authoritative reference that pulls together the tools necessary to take advantage of these pioneering concepts.

"This monumental work will be an invaluable resource for practitioners and students in all areas of computer science,” said Alex Nicolau of UC Irvine. “In today's world where parallel computing is ubiquitous--from desktops to cell phones and game consoles--this reference work will be indispensable."

Key concepts in the Encyclopedia for professionals, researchers and students of Parallel Computing include:

• Programming models and programming languages
• Debugging and race detection
• Laws of parallel computing
• Theoretical models of computation
• Supercomputer/high-performance computing machines
• Interconnection networks

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Contact: David Padua, Department of Computer Science, 217/333-4223.

Writer: Jennifer LaMontagne, associate director of communications, Department of Computer Science, 217/333-4049.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.