The Need for Parallel Computing

Question 1

What sort of areas demand faster computation?

Answer 1

• Weather Prediction
• Video Rendering
• Gene Sequencing
• Big Data Analytics

Question 2

What is Moore’s Law? What is the revised version?

Answer 2

Moore’s law states the number of transistors in a circuit roughly doubles every year.
The revised version states that circuit complexity doubles every two years.

Question 3

Usually, more transistors equals to more _____

Answer 3

power

Question 4

After around 2005, integrated circuits gained in increase in performance not through advances in single thread performance, but in __________ ______

Answer 4

adding cores

Question 5

The fastest computer in the world is called ______ ______ and has over 158 000 __-core CPUs. It can perform ____ petaflops

Answer 5

Fujitsu Fugaku, 48, 415

Question 6

Software should be ______ rather than _______ to leverage compute power

Answer 6

parallel, sequential

Question 7

Parallel software executes multiple ________ instruction streams

Answer 7

independent

Question 8

In parallel software execution, each instruction stream also has an independent _____ speed, meaning you cannot predict where one thread is based on the progress of another thread

Answer 8

clock

Question 9

Describe the shared memory architecture

Answer 9

Multiple processes P0, P1, P2 are connected to the same memory unit

Question 10

Describe the distributed memory architecture

Answer 10

Multiple processes P0, P1, P2 all have their own memory unit

Question 11

In a shared memory architecture, ____________ is easier between threads

Answer 11

coordination

Question 12

In a distributed memory architecture, processes communicate with each other via _______ ____

Answer 12

network cards

Question 13

Usually you will see a hybrid of shared and ___________ memory architectures

Answer 13

distributed

Question 14

Describe a banking scenario where improper parallel execution could cause an inconsistency

Answer 14

2 withdrawals occur at the same time, allowing the withdraw-er to take out more money than they have

Question 15

What is the general process of parallel programming? (4)

Answer 15

1. Identify independent pieces of work that can be performed concurrently
2. Understand the target model and design for it (shared vs distributed memory?)
3. Employ high-level, standard library constructs when possible
4. Clearly define pre and post conditions

Question 16

Compilers have not being successful at extracting parallelism because they are too ______ ________. Programmers must __________ and code the parallel algorithms and data structures

Answer 16

context sensitive, conceptualize