Parallel Processing: What Have We Done Wrong?

Abstract

Parallel processing has been a subject of extensive research for over 20 years, especially in the last 10 years, with many commercial parallel machines becoming available, from small scale parallel machines to massively parallel machines. At one time, it was claimed that parallel machines will become the mainstream computers. However, more recently, some parallel computer vendors have gone out of business and some others are struggling. Some pessimists even claimed that this is a dying field. So, what’s wrong? Five distinguished panelists are invited to share their views on this issue. The panelists are also expected to address what could be done and could be done in order to make parallel computers truly mainstream computers. Panelists