Distributed versus parallel computing

摘要

The elegant but simple von Neumann single processing design of computers has been challenged by new applications of databases, computer vision and speech where a multi-processing system seems more suited to such tasks. We look at three ways in which parallel machines may be used: for general purpose computing, for algorithms which are not well suited to von Neumann machines and for exploring forms of computation which cannot reasonably be dealt with on von Neumann machines.