The Bulk-Synchronous Parallel Model

Abstract

The bulk-synchronous parallel (BSP) model of computation was introduced by Valiant [1] in the early 1990s, and further developed over the ensuing years [34, 35,41, 48–50]. Its primary purpose is to act as a “bridging model” [1] mitigating the discrepancies between parallel architectures and the software executed on them. In other words, BSP is intended to be a universal model of parallel computing, capable of providing a reliable underlying framework for the design of both scalable parallel architectures and portable parallel applications [34].