From: Randy Crawford Newsgroups: comp.parallel Subject: Re: Book about parallell computing Date: 19 Sep 1998 16:31:12 GMT Organization: Approved: bigrigg@cs.cmu.edu Message-Id: <6u0m8g$cpm$1@encore.ece.cmu.edu> Originator: bigrigg@ece.cmu.edu Gunnar Lindholm wrote: > Hello. > I'm a student that is very interested in parallel computing. Could > some one tell me if there is any good book (perhaps introductory book) > about high performance computing? > > I saw a book : > > High Performance Computing,2nd Edition > > by Kevin Dowd & Charles Severance, > > 2nd Edition July 1998,ISBN 1-56592-312-X, > > 466 pages, $29.95 > (and someone in this news group said he was disappointed about this > book) And I was surprised by that. IMO, Dowd's 1st edition of the book is an outstanding intro for working programmers on how to get the most from a modern RISC uniprocessor systems, and leads to an awareness of how serial HPC techniques translate onto parallel machines. Dowd's is not really a book on parallel programming, algorithms, architectures, or theory, however. I haven't come across any books that introduce all these topics well in a single text, so I would look into more than one book that addresses each topic well. For an intro to parallel programming and algorithms, I like "Introduction to Parallel Computing" by Kumar et al, 1994, Benjamin Cummings, ISBN 0-8053-3170-0. While primarily a book on parallel algorithms, it surveys parallel programming languaes and models, uses better examples than most texts, and is mercifully light on impenetrable notation (a problem common to most algorithmist authors, IMHO). For an intro to parallel architectures, I recommend "Advanced Computer Architecture" by Kai Hwang, 1993, McGraw Hill, ISBN 0-07-031622-8. It looks to me like the definitive intro to parallel computer models, networks, interconnects, processors, and programming tools. I think the two books would introduce parallel processing very well. -- Randy Crawford crawford@mrj.com rcrawford@erols.com N=1 ==> P=NP -- Articles to bigrigg+parallel@cs.cmu.edu (Admin: bigrigg@cs.cmu.edu) Archive: http://www.hensa.ac.uk/parallel/internet/usenet/comp.parallel