Overview: The Promise of Massively Parallel Computing

Look at the latest series of Intel technology roadmaps and the direction becomes clear: multi-core processing is taking the industry on a fast-moving and exciting ride into profoundly new territory. The defining paradigm in computing performance has shifted inexorably from raw clock speed to parallel operations and energy efficiency. Industry participants are moving swiftly to adapt to the change. Noted Intel Fellow, David J. Kuck, who has been working for several decades in this area, describes the promise of multi-core processing and massively parallel computing as well as the challenges presented to the computer industry.

What experience do you have in parallel computing?

I have actually been working on parallel computing for 40 years. I first started in this area as a professor—we built parallel machines at universities, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and I also did a lot of consulting in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Then, we started producing software through my little company—KAI—in 1979. The concepts have been around for a very long time. There has been a trickle down from supercomputers to minisupercomputers and servers that has now reached Intel chips—the multi-core processors.

At the same time, the applications have gone from the very highest end of technical computing to more about throughput and desktop applications. Until recently, there hasn’t been an economic incentive to push parallel computing. Now we are at the crossroads, and the economic incentives are enormous. A long list of research ideas and advanced development ideas and products are coming to the fore.

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