Parallel Processing Assignment 1

1) What is Parallel Computing?

2) What is a parallel computer?

3) What is Moore’s Law?

4) What are the applications parallel computing?

5) What is pipelining?

6) What is super-scalar Execution?

7) What is logical and physical organization of parallel programming platforms?

8) Differentiate between SIMD and MIMD?

9) Differentiate between UMA and NUMA.

10) What is Cache Coherence?

11) What is a Parallel system? What are the sources of overhead in parallel
programs?

12) What are the performance metrics of parallel systems?

13) Describe the speed up gain due to pipelining.

14) Explain completely-connected, linear array and Mesh networks?

15) Suppose that we are considering an enhancement to the processor of a server

system used for web serving. The new CPU is 10 times faster on computation in the
web serving application than the original processor. Assuming that the CPU is idle
for 20% of time, does computation for 30% of time and is waiting for I/O for 50%
time, what is the overall speed up in this case?

16) Assume we make an enhancement to a computer that improves some mode of

execution by a factor of 15. This new fast mode is used 40% of the time, measured
as a percentage of the execution time when the fast mode is in use. What is the
overall speedup we can achieve?

17)Computer A executes the 80286 ISA and has a 2.5 GHz clock frequency.
Computer B executes the 80386 ISA and has a 3 GHz clock frequency. On average,
programs execute 1.5 times as many 386 instructions than 286 instructions.
i. For Program P1, Computer A has a CPI of 2 and Computer B has a CPI
of 3. Which computer is faster for P1? What is the speedup?
ii. For Program P2, Computer A has a CPI of 1 and Computer B has a CPI
of 2. Which computer is faster for P2? What is the speedup?