Chapter 1

Introduction and Overview

Abstract

Basic concepts and features of current computing platforms and environments are reviewed, preparing the ground for the central subject of this book, the controlled execution of several independent, asynchronous flows of instructions. Particular attention is paid to architectural issues having an impact on efficient software development, like the hierarchical organization of memory accesses, the impact of the ongoing multicore evolution of computing architectures, or the increasing impact of heterogeneous computing systems involving, in addition to the standard processing units, and innovative architectures like Intel Xeon Phi or GPU accelerators.

Keywords

Processes

SMP platform

Distributed memory ...

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