View source for Parallel computing

'''Parallel computing''' is a form of [[computation]] in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved at the same time.

== Description ==

There are several different forms of parallel computing: 

* Bit-level
* Instruction level 
* Data 
* Task parallelism

Parallelism has been employed for many years, mainly in high-performance computing, but interest in it has grown lately due to the physical constraints preventing frequency scaling. As power consumption (and consequently heat generation) by computers has become a concern in recent years, parallel computing has become the dominant paradigm in computer architecture, mainly in the form of multi-core processors.

== Concurrent computing ==

Parallel computing is closely related to [[concurrent computing]].

They are frequently used together, and often conflated, though the two are distinct: it is possible to have parallelism without concurrency (such as bit-level parallelism), and concurrency without parallelism (such as multitasking by time-sharing on a single-core CPU).

* In parallel computing, a computational task is typically broken down in several, often many, very similar subtasks that can be processed independently and whose results are combined afterwards, upon completion. 

* In concurrent computing, the various processes often do not address related tasks; when they do, as is typical in distributed computing, the separate tasks may have a varied nature and often require some inter-process communication during execution.

== See also ==

* [[Calculation]]
* [[Computation]]
* [[Computational complexity theory]]
* [[Computing]]
* [[Concurrent computing]]
* [[Grid computing]]
* [[Programming paradigm]]

== External links == 

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_computing Parallel computing] @ Wikipedia


[[Category:Computer science]]
[[Category:Computing]]