Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!hao!gatech!hubcap!elroy!johns%tybalt.caltech.edu
From: elroy!johns%tybalt.caltech.edu@ames.arc.nasa.gov (John Salmon)
Newsgroups: comp.hypercube
Subject: Re: Difficulty of programming in parallel
Message-ID: <1010@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 24 Feb 88 13:26:28 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.UUCP
Lines: 21
Approved: hypercube@hubcap.clemson.edu


In article <959@hubcap.UUCP> brooks@LLL-CRG.LLNL.GOV (Eugene D. Brooks III) writes:
>The program architecture required for a distributed system is VERY
>DIFFERENT than that of a serial program, and you can't slowly evolve
>a serial program into a parallel program for a distributed architecture,
>as you can for a shared memory machine.
>
>						Eugene Brooks
>-------------------------------------------------------------------

I disagree that programs have to be different.
The program architecture must be different on sequential
and distributed memory machines.  Many of the problems
one encounters are due to a flawed model for using the so-called
"host" processor on the commercial hypercubes.  
There is a large and growing body of hypercube software that
runs UNCHANGED on sequential machines.  For a fuller description
than I feel like typing in at the moment, see "Cubix: Programming
Hypercubes without Programming Hosts," in the Proceedings of the
1987 Knoxville Hypercube Conference or send me email.

John Salmon