Parallel applications: The next frontier for computer indus

I believe parallel computing represents a revolution on par with the development of the personal computer. T h e PC brought power to the people in their offices, their homes, their schools, and even their cars. Similarly, parallel coniputers will bring the power of the largest computers and their applications to many people. Parallel computers will speed progress in scientific and medical research, allow manufacturers to build all kinds of new products, offer new services along the information highways, and foster more effective education. When our industry was emerging, we needed lots of debate about the differences in designs of parallel computers, and I have a great deal of respect for the innovations the very smart hardware designers produced. Thanks to their efforts, we now have a variety of parallel products that elegantly lash together multiple processors to create computing power that scales almost beyond the imagination. However, I believe computer applications and not computer architecture -will ultimately drive the market for parallel computing. Now that parallel processing is maturing, people will buy our machines in much the same way they buy cars. While certain auto enthusiasts and race-car drivers might he greatly interested in automotive breakthroughs a new engine design, for example most of us are less concerned with innovation under the hood than we are with how fast and how far -the car will take us. Likewise, those of us who qualify as computer “nerds” may be fascinated with the latency and bandwidth of the latest switch design. But our potential customers would much rather hear about how fast the machine will nin their critical applications or how Far ahcad of the competition the machine will take them. Of course, car buyers and computer buyers alike want to balance the raw performance of their new machines against their cost. Figure 1. Purine Nucleoside Phosphorylase is an enzyme important in t-cell immunity. The structure shown here is the human form solved by Steven Ealick and his coworkers at Cornell. Based on X-ray structures of several molecules thought to be similar to intermediate stages of the reaction, the Ealick group wants to reconstruct and animate the enzyme reaction path. Courtesy Steven Ealick and his coworkers (Cornell University), and Richard Gillilan (Cornell Theory Center) for the scientific visualization.