Vishkin Article on Parallelism Published in Communications of the ACM

Professor Uzi Vishkin recently published an article in Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM), titled Using simple abstraction to reinvent computing for parallelism.

In the paper, Vishkin points out that the recent dramatic shift from single-processor computer systems to many-processor parallel ones requires reinventing much of computer science to build and program the new systems. However, parallel computing research has not focused on ease of programming as a primary objective. Vishkin proposes what he describes as a radical parallel programming and architecture idea: the new parallel systems should start with a simple abstraction that encapsulates the desired interface between programmers and system builders.

Vishkin also describes his idea for a general-purpose many-core explicit multi-threaded (XMT) computer architecture designed from the ground up to capitalize on the on-chip resources becoming available and reduce single-task completion time.

The article can be read in its entirety on the Communications of the ACM website.

Communications of the ACM is the leading print and online publication for the computing and information technology fields. Read by leading professionals in computing worldwide, with a readership of over 90,000 ACM members, Communications is recognized as a trusted and knowledgeable source of industry information for today’s computing professional.

Published January 14, 2011