Parallelism and CSE [computing in science and engineering]

Trends in many areas of computation are moving toward multifunctional applications in science and engineering. Developing multifunctional applications requires reusing existing applications. This has led many forward-looking independent software vendors (ISVs) to team up to produce joint products. The products that result provide users with more benefits but at the cost of requiring more capable computer systems. Continuing system performance improvement is necessary in areas ranging from CSE (computing in science and engineering) to ERP (enterprise resource planning), and parallelism can provide the increasing speed and memory sizes needed. Parallelism in computing is as old as the first two decades of electronic computers, and it is as new as four-processor parallel workstations or 4000-processor massively parallel supercomputers. Most ISVs are now motivated to develop parallel applications, but new efforts are often haunted by the broken schedules and superlinear resource demands of many past parallelism projects. While the Department of Energy's ASCI project, for example, can still afford to put multiyear efforts into new application development, most development projects cannot. Most of the software used today, even in large enterprises, is produced by ISVs-not users or enterprises. Because the 20000-odd ISVs are mostly small, discipline-focused companies, practical approaches to parallel software development are crucial.