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Distributed and Parallel Computing Hesham El-Rewini and Ted G. Lewis 1997 | 469 pages ISBN: 1884777511 |
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| $60.00 | Softbound print book | Out of print (?) | |
Preface
In 1992, we published the forerunner to this book, Introduction to Parallel Computing (Prentice Hall), which was quickly adopted by almost 100 universities worldwide to teach classes in parallel computing. Since then, we have received many useful comments from students and instructors who used our book--comments that have helped us understand how a better book could be written. This book is the result of this feedback and also describes the rapid changes in distributed and parallel computing that have taken place in the five years since 1992.Because the field has changed so much in the last five years, we realized that an entirely new book was needed. Therefore, of the 12 chapters in this book, two are major revisions of the first book and the remaining ten are entirely new. We were motivated by several themes: the transition from parallel to distributed systems--mainly motivated by the rise of the Internet, the observation that most university courses were a blend of theory and practical application, and the need for a survey of language and operating system issues in the field. This version of the book contains much more information on both theory and practical programming.
This book has been class-tested by both authors. In fact, it was the class notes for the University of Nebraska at Omaha's CSCI4440/8446 and CSCI8720 and Naval Postgraduate School's CS4452. These experiences have been incorporated into the present book. Our students corrected errors and improved the organization of the book. They worked out many of the exercises and made suggestions for new ones. We would like to thank the students in these classes.
We also owe much to many colleagues, who have contributed to the production of this book. In particular, to Thomas Bräunl, who contributed material and sample programs on Parallaxis for chapter 8 and provided many suggestions for other chapters. Nan C. Schaller provided a very thorough review of the entire book. Clay Breshears and Michael A. Langston carefully reviewed and made corrections to chapters 4 and 5. Rusty Lusk provided many useful comments on chapters 9-11. Mohammad Khan Dhodhi, Alexey Lastovetsky, Greg Riccardi, Donna Reese, Robert J. Poulin, Ivan Stojmenovic, Ignatios Vakalis, and Albert Y. Zomaya read drafts of the book and all contributed to the improvement of the original manuscript. Ramandeep Singh Khurana, Scott Lundell, and Dale G. Smith read portions of the book and wrote the code for some of the programming examples. We are indebted to all of them for many suggestions and insightful conversation.
We thank the MPI Forum and those individuals who are maintaining the MPI-2 drafts for making the documentation easily available. We would also like to thank Gul Agha, Selim G. Akl, Harold Stone, and Albert Y. Zomaya for their generous comments on the book. Special thanks to Marjan Bace for many useful suggestions and to Mary Piergies, Katherine Antonsen, Heather Lyon, and Ted Kennedy of Manning Publications Co. for their help in making this book a reality. Of course, responsibility for errors and inconsistencies rests with us.
Finally, and most of all, we want to thank our patient
wives, Sherine and Molly, for tolerating all the long hours we
spent on this book and for their endless support. Hesham would
also like to thank his brother, Salah, for the many useful time-management
techniques he suggested, without which finishing this project
would not have been possible.
HESHAM EL-REWINI
TED G. LEWIS
DESCRIPTION
Distributed and Parallel Computing is a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art in concurrent computing. It covers four major aspects:
- Architecture and performance
- Theory and complexity analysis of parallel algorithms
- Programming languages and systems for writing parallel and distributed programs
- Scheduling of parallel and distributed tasks
Many books on parallel computing have been published during the last 10 years or so. Most are already outdated since the themes and technologies in this area are changing very rapidly. Particularly, the notion that parallel and distributed computing are two separate fields is now beginning to fade away; technological advances have been bridging the gap. Distributed and Parallel Computing is unique in recognizing how distributed systems are utlized for parallel computations. The coverage and the contents represent the state of the art.
Distributed and Parallel Computing is designed for computer science and engineering students as well as professionals in the field (programmers, managers, technologists).