Holl. Zusammenfass.

The International Workshop on "The Use of Supercomputers in Theoretical Science" took place on January 24 and 25, 1991, at the University of Antwerp (UIA), Antwerpen, Belgium. It was the sixth in a series of workshops, the fIrst of which took place in 1984. The principal aim of these workshops is to present the state of the art in scientific large-scale and high speed-computation. Computational science has developed into a third methodology equally important now as its theoretical and experimental companions. Gradually academic researchers acquired access to a variety of supercomputers and as a consequence computational science has become a major tool for their work. It is a pleasure to thank the Belgian National Science Foundation (NFWO-FNRS) and the Ministry of ScientifIc Affairs for sponsoring the workshop. It was organized both in the framework of the Third Cycle "Vectorization, Parallel Processing and Supercomputers" and the "Governemental Program in Information Technology". We also very much would like to thank the University of Antwerp (Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen -VIA) for fInancial and material support. Special thanks are due to Mrs. H. Evans for the typing and editing of the manuscripts and for the preparation of the author and subject indexes. J.T. Devreese P.E. Van Camp University of Antwerp July 1991 v CONlENTS High Perfonnance Numerically Intensive Applications on Distributed Memory Parallel Computers .................... . F.W. Wray Abstract ......................................... .

The contributions of a diverse selection of international hardware and software specialists are assimilated in this book's exploration of the development of massively parallel processing (MPP). The emphasis is placed on industrial applications and collaboration with users and suppliers from within the industrial community consolidates the scope of the publication. From a practical point of view, massively parallel data processing is a vital step to further innovation in all areas where large amounts of data must be processed in parallel or in a distributed manner, e.g. fluid dynamics, meteorology, seismics, molecular engineering, image processing, parallel data base processing. MPP technology can make the speed of computation higher and substantially reduce the computational costs. However, to achieve these features, the MPP software has to be developed further to create user-friendly programming systems and to become transparent for present-day computer software. Application of novel electro-optic components and devices is continuing and will be a key for much more general and powerful architectures. Vanishing of communication hardware limitations will result in the elimination of programming bottlenecks in parallel data processing. Standardization of the functional characteristics of a programming model of massively parallel computers will become established. Then efficient programming environments can be developed. The result will be a widespread use of massively parallel processing systems in many areas of application.

In this book, many ideas by Felix Hausdorff are described and contemporary mathematical theories stemming from them are sketched.