Date:27/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/27/stories/2008092761150300.htm

Kerala - Kochi

Parallel programming becomes a challenge in computer science

Staff Reporter

Kochi: Parallel programming is perhaps the largest problem in computer science today, said American Author Robert Bob Marcus.

He was speaking at the valedictory session of the three-day international conference on ‘Advanced Computing and Communication Technologies for High Performance Applications’ held at Federal Institute of Science and Technology, Angamaly.

“Parallel software has an uneven record from research perspective. This is an exciting opportunity—new programming languages, new instructions, set architectures, new interconnection protocols and the like.... The platform ranges from multi-core chips and GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) to cloud computing environments. There is a growing consensus that data parallelism is necessary for scalability in many application areas,” he said.

Emerging areas

Touching upon the emerging approaches in the area, Mr. Marcus said Grids had multiple owners and performance using shared resources was the key goal. Regarding Clouds, “it has a single owner and scalability across shared resources is the key goal”. He also said he had initiated an ‘Enterprise Cloud Computing’ group to enable industry, government and researchers to exchange information on Cloud Computing.

P.V. Mathew, Chairman, FISAT, presided over the function. FISAT Principal Pailo Paul, E. K. Rajavarma, Treasurer, Federal Bank Officers Association Educational Society, and Professor J.C. Prasad spoke.