Chapter 4

Parallel and Distributed Systems

Abstract

Computer clouds are large-scale parallel and distributed systems, collections of autonomous and heterogeneous systems. Cloud organization is based on a large number of ideas and on the experience accumulated since the first electronic computer was used to solve computationally challenging problems.

In this chapter we overview concepts in parallel and distributed systems important for understanding basic challenges in the design and use of computer clouds. Data-level and thread-level parallelism, parallel computer architectures, SIMD architectures, and GPUs are discussed along with the limitations of application speedup and Amdahl's Law, including its formulation for multicore processors. ...

Get Cloud Computing, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.