iWarp - Anatomy of a parallel computing system [By Thomas Gross and David R. Ohallaron]

"iWarp - Anatomy of a Parallel Computing System" is more than a textbook on the anatomy of a parallel system; it reports on Thomas Gross and David Ohallaron's experiences as members of the iWarp design and development team. As a secondary goal, the book intends to provide information on current trends in parallel and distributed systems. This book is an interesting report on the design process and characteristics of the iWarp system. It is not, however, easy reading material, because it requires previous knowledge of instruction-level parallelism, operating systems, and communications. The book lacks a regular style, often switching from third to first person. Other minor inconveniences include the fact that figure references are often not on the same page as the figure. While there are no major flaws in the text, some points are not explained. In addition, Gross and Ohallaron make far too many references to other sections of the book, making the text redundant and extremely uninteresting. Such references could be useful for those readers using the book purely for reference; however, the book's sequential structure makes this extremely difficult.