A Survey of Models of Parallel Computation

Serial computing's popularity can be attributed to the von Neumann model providing a single, general model of serial computation. This has led to portability, predictability and programmability in serial computation. However, there is no such single model in parallel computation. Rather, numerous models abound with some being more popular than others, but there is as yet no clear leader. This survey presents several such candidate models of parallel computation. Each of the surveyed models is described and criticised, and assessed as to how it satisfies a series of requirements for a model of parallel computation. This report came about as a result of lecturing undertaken by the author in the area of models of parallel computation. It attempts to provide an introduction to the area and a justification of its study, along with a survey of numerous key models. 1 Introduction Despite an apparent trend towards parallel computers being composed of nodes of independent processor-memory pair..