Single processing units have now reached a point where further major improvements in their performance are restricted by their physical limitations. This is causing a slowing down in advances at the same time as new scientific challenges are demanding exascale speed. This has meant that parallel processing has become key to High Performance Computing (HPC). This book contains the proceedings of the 14th biennial ParCo conference, ParCo2011, held in Ghent, Belgium. The ParCo conferences have traditionally concentrated on three main themes: Algorithms, Architectures and Applications. Nowadays though, the focus has shifted from traditional multiprocessor topologies to heterogeneous and manycores, incorporating standard CPUs, GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). These platforms are, at a higher abstraction level, integrated in clusters, grids and clouds. The papers presented here reflect this change of focus. New architectures, programming tools and techniques are also explored, and the need for exascale hardware and software was also discussed in the industrial session of the conference.This book will be of interest to all those interested in parallel computing today, and progress towards the exascale computing of tomorrow.

As predicted by Gordon E. Moore in 1965, the performance of computer processors increased at an exponential rate. Nevertheless, the increases in computing speeds of single processor machines were eventually curtailed by physical constraints. This led to the development of parallel computing, and whilst progress has been made in this field, the complexities of parallel algorithm design, the deficiencies of the available software development tools and the complexity of scheduling tasks over thousands and even millions of processing nodes represent a major challenge to the construction and use of more powerful parallel systems. This book presents the proceedings of the biennial International Conference on Parallel Computing (ParCo2015), held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in September 2015. Topics covered include computer architecture and performance, programming models and methods, as well as applications. The book also includes two invited talks and a number of mini-symposia. Exascale computing holds enormous promise in terms of increasing scientific knowledge acquisition and thus contributing to the future well-being and prosperity of mankind. A number of innovative approaches to the development and use of future high-performance and high-throughput systems are to be found in this book, which will be of interest to all those whose work involves the handling and processing of large amounts of data.

The US, Europe, Japan and China are racing to develop the next generation of supercomputers – exascale machines capable of 10 to the 18th power calculations a second – by 2020. But the barriers are daunting: the challenge is to change the paradigm of high-performance computing. The 2012 biennial high performance workshop, held in Cetraro, Italy in June 2012, focused on the challenges facing the computing research community to reach exascale performance in the next decade. This book presents papers from this workshop, arranged into four major topics: energy, scalability, new architectural concepts and programming of heterogeneous computing systems. Chapter 1 introduces the status of present supercomputers, which are still about two orders of magnitude separated from the exascale mark. Chapter 2 examines energy demands, a major limiting factor of today's fastest supercomputers; the quantum leap in performance required for exascale computing will require a shift in architectures and technology. In Chapter 3, scalable computer paradigms for dense linear algebra on massive heterogeneous systems are presented, and Chapter 4 discusses architectural concepts. Finally, Chapter 5 addresses the programming of heterogeneous systems. This book will be of interest to all those wishing to understand how the development of modern supercomputers is set to advance in the next decade.

The book ‘Data Intensive Computing Applications for Big Data’ discusses the technical concepts of big data, data intensive computing through machine learning, soft computing and parallel computing paradigms. It brings together researchers to report their latest results or progress in the development of the above mentioned areas. Since there are few books on this specific subject, the editors aim to provide a common platform for researchers working in this area to exhibit their novel findings. The book is intended as a reference work for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, as well as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research workers and scientists on the subjects of big data and cloud/parallel and distributed computing, and explains didactically many of the core concepts of these approaches for practical applications. It is organized into 24 chapters providing a comprehensive overview of big data analysis using parallel computing and addresses the complete data science workflow in the cloud, as well as dealing with privacy issues and the challenges faced in a data-intensive cloud computing environment. The book explores both fundamental and high-level concepts, and will serve as a manual for those in the industry, while also helping beginners to understand the basic and advanced aspects of big data and cloud computing.

High-performance computing (HPC) has become an essential tool in the modern world. However, systems frequently run well below theoretical peak performance, with only 5% being reached in many cases. In addition, costly components often remain idle when not required for specific programs, as parts of the HPC systems are reserved and used exclusively for applications. A project was started in 2013, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), to find ways of improving system utilization by compromising on dedicated reservations for HPC codes and applying co-scheduling of applications instead. The need was recognized for international discussion to find the best solutions to this HPC utilization issue, and a workshop on co-scheduling in HPC, open to international participants – the COSH workshop – was held for the first time at the European HiPEAC conference, in Prague, Czech Republic, in January 2016. This book presents extended versions of papers submitted to the workshop, reviewed for the second time to ensure scientific quality. It also includes an introduction to the main challenges of co-scheduling and a foreword by Arndt Bode, head of LRZ, one of Europe's leading computer centers, as well as a chapter corresponding to the invited keynote speech by Intel, whose recent extensions to their processors allow for better control of co-scheduling.

Deep learning and image processing are two areas of great interest to academics and industry professionals alike. The areas of application of these two disciplines range widely, encompassing fields such as medicine, robotics, and security and surveillance. The aim of this book, ‘Deep Learning for Image Processing Applications’, is to offer concepts from these two areas in the same platform, and the book brings together the shared ideas of professionals from academia and research about problems and solutions relating to the multifaceted aspects of the two disciplines. The first chapter provides an introduction to deep learning, and serves as the basis for much of what follows in the subsequent chapters, which cover subjects including: the application of deep neural networks for image classification; hand gesture recognition in robotics; deep learning techniques for image retrieval; disease detection using deep learning techniques; and the comparative analysis of deep data and big data. The book will be of interest to all those whose work involves the use of deep learning and image processing techniques.

The most powerful computers work by harnessing the combined computational power of millions of processors, and exploiting the full potential of such large-scale systems is something which becomes more difficult with each succeeding generation of parallel computers. Alternative architectures and computer paradigms are increasingly being investigated in an attempt to address these difficulties. Added to this, the pervasive presence of heterogeneous and parallel devices in consumer products such as mobile phones, tablets, personal computers and servers also demands efficient programming environments and applications aimed at small-scale parallel systems as opposed to large-scale supercomputers. This book presents a selection of papers presented at the conference: Parallel Computing (ParCo2017), held in Bologna, Italy, on 12 to 15 September 2017. The conference included contributions about alternative approaches to achieving High Performance Computing (HPC) to potentially surpass exa- and zetascale performances, as well as papers on the application of quantum computers and FPGA processors. These developments are aimed at making available systems better capable of solving intensive computational scientific/engineering problems such as climate models, security applications and classic NP-problems, some of which cannot currently be managed by even the most powerful supercomputers available. New areas of application, such as robotics, AI and learning systems, data science, the Internet of Things (IoT), and in-car systems and autonomous vehicles were also covered. As always, ParCo2017 attracted a large number of notable contributions covering present and future developments in parallel computing, and the book will be of interest to all those working in the field.