Current problems in parallelization of the computation algorithms and organization of parallel computations

Abstract

The last decade witnessed an intensive development of the network technologies which enabled a multifold increase in the computer throughput. The matter primarily concerns design of the supercomputers, the most powerful modern computer systems based on the concept of parallel processing of massive data. For example, the supercomputers combining the commercial processors and the facilities of the high-speed LAN’s have become widespread. Another, cheaper path to using the network technologies lies in organizing the so-called distributed computational environments. The gist of this approach lies in uniting the already existing LAN computers, this union being regarded as a single parallel computer. Yet, as compared with the supercomputer based on the commercial processors, this computer system has a lower reliability on account of different membership of the network computer nodes, higher structural nonuniformity on account of different architectures of the nodes, and other distinctions. At that, the problems of establishing efficient means of data exchange between the individual nodes and optimizing the topological structure of the network come to the forefront just as it is the case with the supercomputers. As was already mentioned, the parallel data processing is the characteristic feature of the modern high-speed computer systems. That is why the dedicated software and its proper databases for parallel operation become topical. The supercomputers and distributed computer systems enable one to settle many complicated— and previously intractable or unsolvable—applied problems such as the control of the dynamic systems which in practice have huge dimensions and are labor-intensive. Solution of such problems by the existing computational facilities requires special algorithms taking into account the characteristics of this hardware and enabling parallelization of computations. All of the aforementioned problems such as the outlooks for design of the supercomputers, features of the distributed computer environments, methods of organization of the parallel databases, and optimization of the local-network architecture are considered to a certain extent in the papers published in this issue of Automation and Remote Control . Diverse parallel computation-based algorithms for different fields of mathematics such as discrete and stochastic optimization, mathematical programming with search of the global extremum, statistical modeling of the gas dynamics, direct and inverse problems of the mathematical physics, and so on were proposed. Consideration was also given to numerous applied problems whose solution makes use of the parallel computation technology. We expect that publication under one cover of the papers of renowned researchers that are devoted to a single subject will attract interest of the experts in parallel computations. Although some papers by themselves are beyond the scope of the subject-matter of this issue, together they assume a new sense and, in our opinion, will be of use to the readership of Avtomatika i telemekhanika. I.I. Eremin, A.I. Kibzun