Parallel Computer Architecture

Introduction

For over a decade, we have enjoyed explosive growth in the performance and capa-

bility of computer systems. The theme of this dramatic success story is the advance

of the underlying VLSI technology, which allows clock rates to increase and larger

numbers of components to fit on a chip. The plot of this story centers on computer

architecture, which translates the raw potential of the technology into greater per-

formance and expanded capability of the computer system. The story's leading char-

acter is parallelism. A larger volume of resources means that more operations can be

performed at once, in parallel. Parallel computer architectur ...