Parallel Processing Computers Books - Page 9

SIMD Programming Manual for Linux and Windows (Springer Professional Computing)

Paul Cockshott, Kenneth Renfrew

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

why Pascal? 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Parallel processing is an important but rather specialised field in programming. In general, the subject treatment in this book can be useful, especially given that it covers both linux and Microsoft Windows.

But why is the parallel language a variant of Pascal? Ever since the early 80s, C overtook Pascal in usage. Very little programming goes on in Pascal anymore. It is befuddling why the people who came up with parallel Pascal did so. Far more effective, in terms of outreach, to have derived a parallel language from C [or C++]. While this may not have been the fault of the book's author, it greatly hinders its uptake.

Editorial Review:

The book is intended as a programmer’s introduction to the use of SIMD on PCs. It presents the underlying technology of SIMD processing on current PCs and looks at tools to exploit this including the Intel SIMD library and the Parallel Processing Language Vector Pascal. It explains how to cast algorithms in parallel to exploit the parallel processing capability of standard PCs obtaining large performance gains relative to conventional sequential compilers. It assumes a familiarity with imperative programming but not specifically with Pascal. It does not assume any prior familiarity with the SIMD programming model. The language translation system will be available either as a downloadable for Linux or Windows in association with the book. This book will be particularly useful for programmers in the rapidly growing area of games and multi-media entertainment, and it would also to academics interested in parallel programming techniques or array programming languages.

A New Era in Computation

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Editorial Review:

The transition from serial to parallel computing in which many operations are performed simultaneously and at tremendous speed, marks a new era in computation. These original essays explore the emerging modalities and potential impact of this technological revolution.

Daniel Hillis, inventor of the superfast Connection Machine®, provides a clear explanation of massively parallel computing. The essays that follow investigate the rich possibilities, as well as the constraints, that parallel computation holds for the future. These possibilities include its tremendous potential for simulating currently intractable physical processes and for solving "monster" scientific problems (involving new algorithms and ways of thinking about problem solving that will change the way we think about the world), and its use in the neural sciences (where the biological model for parallel computation is the brain). Essays also address the gap between the promise of this new technology and our current educational system and look at America's technological agenda for the 1990s.

Daniel Hillis is Chief Scientist and James Bailey is Director of Marketing, both at Thinking Machines Corporation.

Selected Essays: Preface, Stephen R. Graubard. What is Massively Parallel Computing, and Why Is It Important? W. Daniel Hillis. Complex Adaptive Systems, John H. Holland. Perspectives on Parallel Computing, Yuefan Deng, James Glimm, David H. Sharp. Parallel Billiards and Monster Systems, Brosl Hasslacher. First We Reshape Our Computers, Then Our Computers Reshape Us: The Broader Intellectual Impact of Parallelism, James Bailey. Parallelism in Conscious Experience. Robert Sokolowski. Of Time, Intelligence, and Institutions, Felix E. Browder. Parallel Computing and Education, Geoffrey C. Fox. The Age of Computing: A Personal Memoir, N. Metropolis. What Should the Public Know about Mathematics? Philip J. Davis. America's Economic-Technological Agenda for the 1990s, Jacob T. Schwartz.

A Daedalus special issue

Concurrency verification: introduction to compositional and noncompositional methods

Willem-Paul de Roever, Frank de Boer, Ulrich Hanneman, Jozef Hooman, Yassine Lakhnech, Mannes Poel, Job Zwiers

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Editorial Review:

This is a systematic and comprehensive introduction both to compositional proof methods for the state-based verification of concurrent programs, such as the assumption-commitment and rely-guarantee paradigms, and to noncompositional methods, whose presentation culminates in an exposition of the communication-closed-layers (CCL) paradigm for verifying network protocols. Compositional concurrency verification methods reduce the verification of a concurrent program to the independent verification of its parts. If those parts are tightly coupled, one additionally needs verification methods based on the causal order between events. These are presented using CCL. The semantic approach followed here allows a systematic presentation of all these concepts in a unified framework which highlights essential concepts. The book is self-contained, guiding the reader from advanced undergraduate level to the state-of-the-art. Every method is illustrated by examples, and a picture gallery of some of the subject's key figures complements the text.

Building Linux Clusters

David HM Spector

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Given that computers are a creation/projection of the human spirit, it is no surprise that they work against each other more often than not. Clients compete for the attention of servers, networks drain each other's bandwidth, and firewalls repel packet storms. But, just as system design mirrors our own greed, so too can it capture our Utopian dream that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Enter clusters, computer networks whose interconnectivity and communication protocols are interwoven so closely that the network can be used to solve single problems.

Author David Spector and the editors at O'Reilly achieve rare hacker-text synergy in recounting the adventure and in teaching the methods of networked hardware/software clusters in Building Linux Clusters, an extended how-to on coupling Linux boxes of all flavors (Alphas, Suns, 486 Intels, Pentiums) to work synchronously to compete with a multimillion-dollar supercomputer. Currently, the 62nd-fastest computer in the world is CPlant, a Linux cluster at Sandia National Labs (www.top500.org). The CPlant cluster is the equivalent of 1890 Intel-based Linux boxes that are running an expanded version of Don Becker's freely redistributable Beowulf platform for cluster operation.

The review of cluster building begins on hands and knees with an overview of networking basics: IP addressing and routing. Bandwidth and CPU-CPU timing requirements can be limiting factors; and, because interdependency is essential, proper design requires a weak-link analysis that establishes the compatibility of CPUs, buses, hard drives, Ethernet cards, hubs, switches, and routers. Strategies for cluster sizes from a few to several hundred are discussed.

In the book's second half, Spector turns his attention to cluster programming and applications, and describes tools, languages (where FORTRAN is still well regarded), libraries, and environments for parallel programming. Also, he gives examples of parallel virtual machines that serve MP3, persistence-of-vision graphics, and Web data to other devices or applications. Four brief appendices provide the essential technical details: an annotated Webography, a message-passing application programming interface, installation scripts for starting up the cluster of nodes at boot time, and a database to administer the activity of the nodes.

The fast pace and light pedantic touch in this book illuminate complexities and engender an excitement in the idea that new capabilities are yet to be found, if we all could just get along. --Peter Leopold

Youth, Pornography, and the Internet

Committee to Study Tools and Strategies for Protecting Kids from Pornography and Their Applicability to Other Inappropriate Internet Content, National Research Council

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Editorial Review:

Examines approaches to protecting children and teens from Internet pornography, threats from sexual predators operating on-line, and other inappropriate material on the Internet. Softcover.

Principles of the Spin Model Checker

Mordechai Ben-Ari

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Very good Introduction into SPIN and Promela. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I'm a computer science student and have used SPIN during my bachelor thesis. I highly recommend this book to every one who wants's to use SPIN.
The book is written in a straightforward way that can easily be understood.

Editorial Review:

Principles of Spin is an introductory book, the only requirement is a background in programming. Spin models are written in the Promela language which is easily learned by students and programmers. Spin is easy to install and use.

The Spin model checker is not only a widely used professional tool but it is also a superb tool for teaching important concepts of computer science such as verification, concurrency and nondeterminism. The book introduces Spin-based software that the author has developed for teaching: jSpin - an integrated development environment for Spin; SpinSpider - uses output from Spin to automatically construct state diagrams of concurrent programs; VN is a tool for visualizing nondeterminism.

Complete programs will demonstrate each construct and concept and these programs will be available on a companion website.

XML for Data Architects: Designing for Reuse and Integration (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

James Bean

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"The book addresses a sorely missing set of considerations in the real world… This is a very timely book."
-Peter Herzum, author of Business Component Factory and CEO of Herzum Software

XML is a tremendous enabler for platform agnostic data and metadata exchanges. However, there are no clear processes and techniques specifically focused on the engineering of XML structures to support reuse and integration simplicity, which are of particular importance in the age of application integration and Web services. This book describes the challenges of using XML in a manner that promotes simplification of integration, and a high degree of schema reuse. It also describes the syntactical capabilities of XML and XML Schemas, and the similarities (and in some cases limitations) of XML DTDs. This book presents combinations of architectural and design approaches to using XML as well as numerous syntactical and working examples.

* Designed to be read three different ways: skim the margin notes for quick information, or use tables in the appendix to locate sections relevant the to a particular issue, or read cover-to-cover for the in-depth treatment.
* Contains numerous tables that describe datatypes supported by the most common DBMSs and map to XML Schema supported data types.
* Unique focus on the value added role and processes of the data architect as they apply to enterprise use of XML.

Distributed Computing: Fundamentals, Simulations, and Advanced Topics (Wiley Series on Parallel and Distributed Computing)

Hagit Attiya, Jennifer Welch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Terse prose fraught with errors and omissions 2 out of 5 stars.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I've struggled to read this text, since it contains many very recent results distilled into intelligently organized chapters. Unfortunately, even though this book is intended for a savvy audience, the text is often too detailed and technical, while important "big picture" intuition is never relayed. Frequent errors in the algorithms and proofs, ranging from simple subscript swaps to more subtle errors in logic to the (rarer) complete lack of logic make this a difficult book to recommend. In addition, the exercises are frequently too vague (sometimes meaningless) -- this book is definitely not recommended for class work.

Editorial Review:

Divided into three information packed parts, Distributed Computing provides a broad-ranging introduction to the theory of distributed computing. The first part covers the fundamental models, issues, and techniques. Part II is organized around key simulations in distributed computing, and their applications. Part III consists of a sampling of more advanced topics.

High Performance Computing: Challenges for Future Systems

David J. Kuck

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Editorial Review:

High performance computing--from PCs to supercomputers--is in a confused state: which architecture, how much parallelism, which software, and when to innovate are all commonly heard questions. The confusion ranges across industry, government, and academia; technical difficulties and policy issues are closely linked. This text clarifies a number of technical points and policy directions in proposing steps toward practical processing. Computing as a whole is at a crossroads because hardware technology appears unable to provide continuing speed increases; parallel architectures and software are not sufficiently developed to provide the practical solutions that have seemed tantalizingly close for some time. After more than a decade of commercial development, no standard or widely accepted systems have emerged. This text defines practical parallelism tests and suggests how they can be passed, by giving specific technical suggestions and by outlining policy steps that should be taken. Students in high performance computing courses will benefit from the text's discussion of these major issues, as they will be dealing with these problems now and in the future.

Embedded Multitasking (Embedded Technology)

Keith E. Curtis

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In an embedded system, firmware is the software that directly interfaces with the microcontroller, controlling the system's function. The major forces driving the embedded firmware development process today are reduced development times, increased complexity, and the need to handle multiple tasks simultaneously. These forces translate into strenuous design requirements for embedded engineers and programmers. Many low-level embedded microcontroller designs have insufficient memory and/or architectural limitations that make the use of a real-time operating system impractical. The techniques presented in this book allow the design of robust multitasking firmware through the use of interleaved state machines. This book presents a complete overview of multitasking terminology and basic concepts. Practical criteria for task selection and state machine design are also discussed.
Designing multitasking firmware is arduous, complex and fraught with potential for errors, and there is no one, "standard" way to do it. This book will present a complete and well-organized design approach with examples and sample source code that designers can follow.

* Covers every aspect of design from the system level to the component level, including system timing, communicating with the hardware, integration and testing.
* Accompanying CD-ROM contains the source code for the text examples and other useful design tools.