What is Parallel Computing

Parallel computing refers to a sort of a computer system during which various computer applications
perform numerous calculations simultaneously. Parallel computing is predicated on the principle of
breaking large problems into smaller ones which will be easily solved at an equivalent time. Parallel
computing has been in use for 2 decades. it's been used with high-performance computers. consistent
with Bischof, the interest to use parallel computing has escalated over the past few years thanks to
numerous setbacks, impedes, and constraints that a lot of users and developers of computer systems
have faced when using frequency scaling techniques .Parallel computing has thus been seen as a relief
to the users of computer computation systems.

Why we require parallel computing?

• Parallel computing deals with larger problems. In the real world, there are multiple things that
run at a certain time but at numerous places simultaneously, which is difficult to manage. In this
case, parallel computing helps to manage this kind of extensively huge data.

• Parallel computing is the key to make data more modeling, dynamic simulation and for
achieving the same. Therefore, parallel computing is needed for the real world too.

• With the help of serial computing, parallel computing is not ideal to implement real-time
systems; also, it offers concurrency and saves time and money.

• Only the concept of parallel computing can organize large datasets, complex, and their
management.

•
The parallel computing approach provides surety the use of resources effectively and
guarantees the effective use of hardware, whereas only some parts of hardware are used in
serial computation, and some parts are rendered idle.

Applications of Parallel Computing

• There are various applications of Parallel Computing, which are as follows:

• One of the primary applications of parallel computing is Databases and Data mining.

• The real-time simulation of systems is another use of parallel computing.

• The technologies, such as Networked videos and Multimedia.

• Science and Engineering.

• Collaborative work environments.

• The concept of parallel computing is used by augmented reality, advanced graphics, and virtual
reality.
Advantages of Parallel computing

• In parallel computing, more resources are used to complete the task that led to decrease the
time and cut possible costs. Also, cheap components are used to construct parallel clusters.

• Comparing with Serial Computing, parallel computing can solve larger problems in a short time.

• For simulating, modeling, and understanding complex, real-world phenomena, parallel

• When the local resources are finite, it can offer benefit you over non-local resources.

• There are multiple problems that are very large and may impractical or impossible to solve them
on a single computer; the concept of parallel computing helps to remove these kinds of issues.

• One of the best advantages of parallel computing is that it allows you to do several things in a
time by using multiple computing resources.

• Furthermore, parallel computing is suited for hardware as serial computing wastes the potential
computing power.

Disadvantages of Parallel Computing

• It addresses Parallel architecture that can be difficult to achieve.

• In the case of clusters, better cooling technologies are needed in parallel computing.

• It requires the managed algorithms, which could be handled in the parallel mechanism.

• The multi-core architectures consume high power consumption.

• The parallel computing system needs low coupling and high cohesion, which is difficult to
create.

• The code for a parallelism-based program can be done by the most technically skilled and expert
programmers.

•
Although parallel computing helps you out to resolve computationally and the data-exhaustive
issue with the help of using multiple processors, sometimes it affects the conjunction of the
system and some of our control algorithms and does not provide good outcomes due to the
parallel option.

• Due to synchronization, thread creation, data transfers, and more, the extra cost sometimes can
be quite large; even it may be exceeding the gains because of parallelization.

• Moreover, for improving performance, the parallel computing system needs different code
tweaking for different target architectures

Task Parallelism
This form of parallelism covers the execution of computer programs across multiple processors on same
or multiple machines. It focuses on executing different operations in parallel to fully utilize the available
computing resources in form of processors and memory.

One example of task parallelism would be an application creating threads for doing parallel processing
where each thread is responsible for performing a different operation. Here is pseudo code illustrating
task parallelism

Data Parallelism

This form of parallelism focuses on distribution of data sets across the multiple computation programs.
In this form, same operations are performed on different parallel computing processors on the
distributed data subset.

One example of data parallelism would be to divide the input data into subsets and pass it to the
threads performing same task on different CPUs. Here is the pseudo example illustrating data
parallelism using a data array called

Data parallelism vs Task parallelism

Data Parallelisms Task Parallelisms

Same task are performed on different subsets of same data. Different task are performed on the same or

Synchronous computation is performed Asynchronous computation is performed.

As there is only one execution thread operating on all sets of data, so As each processor will execute a different thr
the speedup is more. same or different set of data, so speedup is le

Amount of parallelization is proportional to the input size. Amount of parallelization is proportional to t

Future of Parallel Computing

From serial computing to parallel computing, the computational graph has completely changed. Tech
giant likes Intel has already started to include multicore processors with systems, which is a great step
towards parallel computing. For a better future, parallel computation will bring a revolution in the way
of working the computer. Parallel Computing plays an important role in connecting the world with each
other more than before. Moreover, parallel computing's approach becomes more necessary with multi-
processor computers, faster networks, and distributed systems.