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Scalable computing

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Computer Science Today

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1000))

Abstract

Scalable computing will, over the next few years, become the normal form of computing. In this paper we present a unified framework, based on the BSP model, which aims to serve as a foundation for this evolutionary development. A number of important techniques, tools and methodologies for the design of sequential algorithms and programs have been developed over the past few decades. In the transition from sequential to scalable computing we will find that new requirements such as universality and predictable performance will necessitate significant changes of emphasis in these areas. Programs for scalable computing, in addition to being fully portable, will have to be efficiently universal, offering high performance, in a predictable way, on any general purpose parallel architecture. The BSP model provides a discipline for the design of scalable programs of this kind. We outline the approach and discuss some of the issues involved.

This work was supported in part by ESPRIT Basic Research Project 9072-GEPP-COM (Foundations of General Purpose Parallel Computing).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programming Research Group, Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, OX1 3QD, Oxford, England

    W. F. McColl

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  1. W. F. McColl
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Jan van Leeuwen

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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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McColl, W.F. (1995). Scalable computing. In: van Leeuwen, J. (eds) Computer Science Today. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1000. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0015236

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0015236

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60105-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49435-5

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