4. Parallel Computing 14. Introduction

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14. Parallel Computing

14.1 Introduction

This chapter describes approaches to problems to which multiple computing agents are

applied simultaneously.

By "parallel computing", we mean using several computing agents concurrently to

achieve a common result. Another term used for this meaning is "concurrency". We will

use the terms parallelism and concurrency synonymously in this book, although some

authors differentiate them.

Some of the issues to be addressed are:

What is the role of parallelism in providing clear decomposition of

problems into sub-problems?

How is parallelism specified in computation?

How is parallelism effected in computation?

Is parallel processing worth the extra effort?