What is parallel computing and what is the difference between parallel computing and distributed computing?
Parallel computing is a computation system that is designed to execute several processes and perform numerous calculations simultaneously. And it is the study, analysis, design and implementation of computing algorithms by making use of multiple processors to solve a complex problem. Moreover, the primary purpose of parallel computing is to solve the problem faster through using more processors to share workload among computing modules. And it uses multi-processor computers and several independent computers interconnected in unified architecture that works together on a common problem set. Besides, parallel computing is the simultaneous use of multiple compute resources to solve a computation problem using multiple CPUs and by breaking the problem into discrete manageable parts. Additionally, parallel computing is a computing paradigm that uses multiple streams of data processing tasks through multiple CPUs working concurrently.
Types of parallel computing
- Bit-level parallelism
- Instruction-level parallelism
- Task Parallelism
Some application areas of parallel computing include the following:
- Collaborative work environments
- Database and data mining
- Science and engineering
- Virtual reality (VR)
- Augmented reality
- Advanced animation/simulation and graphics
- Multimedia and networked video streaming
Benefits of parallel computing include the following:
- Saves time
- Models practical real world and complex problems
- Reduces cost
- Solves more complex and larger problems in a short period of time
- Leverage remote services
- Massive data storage and faster data computational power
- More