24.1 Understanding high performance computing  (Page 3/6)

The rest is history – most commercially built computers for about the first forty years (1951 to 1991) followed the von Neumann architecture. The electronic engineers keep building more reliable and faster electronics. From vacuum tube, to transistor, to integrated circuit to what we call today "chip" technology. This transformation made computers break down less frequently (they were more reliable), physically smaller, needing less electric power and faster. Personal computers were introduced in the late 1970's and within ten years became more commonly available and used.

One short coming was that most programming efforts were towards improving the linear (or sequential) way of thinking or solving a problem. After all, the computer electronic engineers would be making a faster computer next year. Everyone understood that the computer had only one central processing unit (CPU). Right?

The need for power

Well, wrong. Computer scientists and electronic engineers had been experimenting with multi-processor computers with parallel programming since 1946. But it's not until the 1980's that we see the first parallel processing computers (built by Cray and other computer companies) being sold as commercial built computers. It's time for another example.

This elephant example is exactly where the computer scientists had arrived. The electronic engineers were going to continue to make improvements in the speed of a single central processing unit computer, but not soon enough to satisfy the "need for power" to be able to solve tasks requiring immense computing power . Some of the new tasks that would require immense computer power included the human genome project, searching for oil and gas by creating 3 dimensional images of geological formations and the study of gravitational forces in the universe; just to mention a few. The solution: parallel processing to the rescue. Basically the only way to get this immense computer power was to implement parallel processing techniques. During the late 1970's and early 1980's scientists saw the need to explore the parallel processing paradigm more fully and thus the birth of High Performance Computing. Various national and international conferences started during the 1980's to be able to further the cause of High Performance Computing. For example in November of 2008 the "SC08" supercomputing conference celebrated their 20 ^th anniversary.