CRC HANDBOOK ON ALGORITHMS AND THEORY OF COMPUTATION Mikhail Atallah, Editor Chapter 48 Parallel Computation: Models and Complexity Issues

This chapter is an introduction to the area of parallel computation written in accordance with the guidelines for the CRC HANDBOOK ON ALGORITHMS AND THEORY OF COMPUTATION where it will appear. References to chapters refer to other chapters in this book. This research partially supported by National Science Foundation grant CCR-9209184; a Fulbright Scholarship, Senior Research Award; and a Spanish Fellowship for Scientific and Technical Investigations. Address during 1995--96: Departament Llenguatges i Sistemes Inform`atics, Universitat Polit`ecnica de Catalunya, Pau Gargallo 5, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. y This research partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant OGP 38937. 1 Introduction Parallel computation is the branch of computational complexity theory concerned with the development and analysis of parallel computing models and the techniques for solving and classifying problems on such models. Despite technology that continuous..