Issues on the algorithm-software continuum

To date, highest performance on parallel systems has required expertise spanning high-level algorithm design through architecture-dependent fine tuning of the implementation. Application users who are uninformed about architecture details are not able to take advantage of (or compensate for) idiosyncrasies of the target machine; parallel processing experts are often not able to explore radically different ways of solving a physical problem in order to adopt the approach best suited to a particular architecture. Moreover, software tools have not yet succeeded in automating the realization of high-performance parallel applications. The authors therefore deal with questions about how much of an algorithm designer a user of parallel systems can/should be expected to be, and how much software support is realistic to expect.<>