Abstract
This work potentially affect two areas: interconnection network design, and parallel programming methodology.
A key issue in designing parallel computers is the balance between computing power and communication capacity. As we have observed, there exist several problems that are inherently nonlocal, and therefore require high communication capability for efficient implementation. We also listed several problems for which fast network implementations can be designed. Some of these problems, however, possess only limited locality, and thus require relatively powerful communication networks (e.g. Butterflies). To summarize, we cannot give a clear answer to the question of how powerful communication networks we must build; but as more results become known about locality of different problems and as we develop locality exploiting algorithms for more problems, we will have a more complete answer.
Our ideas provide a methodology for developing portable parallel programs. The first step given a problem is to determine its gross locality. This determines a native architecture for the problem. The next step is to design an algorithm on the native model that fully exploits locality. This algorithm can now be simulated on different architectures, and is guaranteed to have good efficiency.
Supported in part by NSF-DARPA grant # CCR-9005448 and Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Grant # F49620-90-C-0029.
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Ranade, A. (1993). A framework for analyzing locality and portability issues in parallel computing. In: Meyer, F., Monien, B., Rosenberg, A.L. (eds) Parallel Architectures and Their Efficient Use. Nixdorf 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 678. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56731-3_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56731-3_18
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