As execution speeds reach the physical limits of single cpu computers, the only hope of achieving greater computing power is with parallel systems. Researchers have proposed countless new programming languages, but their differences, similarities, strengths, weaknesses and problem domains are subtle and often not well understood. Informed comparison of parallel languages is difficult. This volume compares eight parallel programming languages based on solutions to four problems. Each chapter includes a description of the language's philosophy, semantics and syntax, and a solution to each problem. By considering solutions rather than language features or theoretical properties, the gap is bridged between the language specialists and users. Both professionals and students in the fields of computer and computational science will find the discussions helpful and understandable.

Despite many years of research and development, parallel programming remains a difficult and specialized task. A simple but general model for parallel processing is still lacking.This book proposes a model that adds parallelism to functions and objects, allowing simple specification of both parallel execution and inter-process communication. Many examples of applying parallel programming are given.

This book contains four review articles in the area of scalable computing. Two of the articles discuss methods and tools for the parallel solution of irregular problems, which have been satisfactorily worked out in heterogeneous systems. One surveys the technology and applications of multimedia server clusters, which are playing an increasing role in the current networked environment. An additional article discusses SilkRoad, which adds distributed shared memory capabilities to the Cilk parallel programming system. Once again, the book represents a new set of steps forward in parallel systems.

This book contains four review articles in the area of scalable computing. Two of the articles discuss methods and tools for the parallel solution of irregular problems, which have been satisfactorily worked out in heterogeneous systems. One surveys the technology and applications of multimedia server clusters, which are playing an increasing role in the current networked environment. An additional article discusses SilkRoad, which adds distributed shared memory capabilities to the Cilk parallel programming system. Once again, the book represents a new set of steps forward in parallel systems.

Massively Parallel Systems (MPSs) with their scalable computation and storage space promises are becoming increasingly important for high-performance computing. The growing acceptance of MPSs in academia is clearly apparent. However, in industrial companies, their usage remains low. The programming of MPSs is still the big obstacle, and solving this software problem is sometimes referred to as one of the most challenging tasks of the 1990's. The 1994 working conference on "Programming Environments for Massively Parallel Systems" was the latest event of the working group WG 10.3 of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) in this field. It succeeded the 1992 conference in Edinburgh on "Programming Environments for Parallel Computing". The research and development work discussed at the conference addresses the entire spectrum of software problems including virtual machines which are less cumbersome to program; more convenient programming models; advanced programming languages, and especially more sophisticated programming tools; but also algorithms and applications.