Computing with Parallel & Vector Machines

Sherrie gave an excellent presentation which began by outlining the history of vector machines. Her presentation showed how architectures of vector machines have changed over time to increase speed and efficiency. The presentation included the comparision of the two major categories of vector processors: Memory to Memory Vector Processors and Register to Register Vector Processors. In the middle of the presentation, Sherrie outlined the paradigms of parallel computing including SISD, SIMD, SPMD, MIMD, Systolic, and Reductionism. The discussion of reductionism was particularly interesting since the theortical design, which is similiar to Data Flow, seems very powerful; however, no commercial reductionism machines have yet been built due to the high overhead involved. The presentation concluded by discussing uses of power vector machines, which include studying chemical reactions and weather patterns.