1) What is Parallel computing ?

Answer: Parallel Computing resembles the study of designing algorithms such that the time
complexity is minimum. Thus the speed up factor is taken into consideration.

2) What is a Parallel computer ?

Answer: A parallel Computer is simply a collection of processors, typically of the same type,
interconnected in a certain fashion to allow the coordination of their activities and the
exchange of data.

3) What is Moore’s Law ?

Answer: Moore's Law states that ‘circuit complexity doubles every eighteen months’.

4) What are the applications parallel computing ?

Answer: There are several applications of parallel computing.
• Effective parallel algorithms are required for problems such as association rule mining,
clustering, classification, and time-series analysis.
• Bioinformatics and astrophysics
• Optimization and Branch-and-bound, and Genetic programming
• Association rule mining, clustering, classification, and time-series analysis.

5) What is pipelining ?
Answer: Pipelining is a technique of dividing one task into multiple subtasks and executing
the subtasks in parallel with multiple hardware units.
6) What is super scalar execution ?
Answer: The ability of a processor to issue multiple instructions in the same cycle is referred
to as superscalar execution.

7) What is true data dependency ?

Answer: If the results of an instruction is required for subsequent instructions then this is
referred to as true data dependency.

8) What is resource dependency ?

Answer: The dependency in which two instructions compete for a single processor resource
is referred to as resource dependency.

9) What is Horizontal waste ?

Answer: If only part of the execution units is used during a cycle, it is termed horizontal
waste.

10) What is Vertical waste ?

Answer: If, during a particular cycle, no instructions are issued on the execution units, it is
referred to as vertical waste.

11) What is VLIW ?

Answer: Instructions that can be executed concurrently are packed into groups and parceled
offto the processor as a single long instruction word to be executed on multiple functional
units at the same time. This is called very large instruction word (VLIW).
12) What is bandwidth of memory ?
Answer: The rate at which data can be pumped from the memory to the processor
determines the
bandwidth of the memory system.

13) What is latency of memory ?

Answer: The time taken in putting a request for a memory word and returns a block of data
of size b containing the requested word is referred to as the latency of the memory.

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

Answer: The logical organization refers to a programmer's view of the platform while the
physical organization refers to the actual hardware organization of the platform.

15) Differentiate between SIMD and MIMD ?

Answer:
● In architectures referred to as single instruction stream, multiple data stream (SIMD),
a
● single control unit dispatches instructions to each processing unit. In an SIMD parallel
● computer, the same instruction is executed synchronously by all processing units.

● Computers in which each processing element is capable of executing a different

program
● independent of the other processing elements are called multiple instruction stream,
multiple
● data stream (MIMD) computers.

● SIMD computers require less hardware than MIMD computers because they have only
one
● global control unit.

● SIMD computers require less memory because only one copy of the program needs to
be stored.
● In contrast, MIMD computers store the program and operating system at each
processor.

16) Differentiate between UMA and NUMA ?

Answer: If the time taken by a processor to access any memory word in the system (global
or local) is identical, the platform is classified as a uniform memory access (UMA)
multicomputer.
On the other hand, if the time taken to access certain memory words is longer than others,
the platform is called a non-uniform memory access (NUMA) multicomputer.

17) What is Cache Coherence ?

Answer: In shared address space platform ensuring that concurrent operations on multiple
copies of the same memory word have well-defined semantics is called cache coherence.
18) What is PRAM Model ?
Answer: A Model of computation (the Random Access Machine, or RAM) consists of p
processors and a global memory of unbounded size that is uniformly accessible to all
processors. All processors access the same address space. Processors share a common clock
but may execute different instructions in each cycle. This ideal model is also referred to as a
parallel random access machine (PRAM).

19) Differentiate between Static and Dynamic Network ?

Answer: Static networks consist of point-to-point communication links among processing
nodes
and are also referred to as direct networks. Dynamic networks, on the other hand, are built
using
switches and communication links.

20) What is Bus-based Network ?

Answer: A bus-based network is perhaps the simplest network consisting of a shared
medium that is common to all the nodes. A bus has the desirable property that the cost of
the network scales linearly as the number of nodes, p.

21) What is a star network ?

Answer: In a star-connected network, one processor acts as the central processor. Every
other processor has a communication link connecting it to this processor.

22) What is a linear array ?

Answer: A linear array is a static network in which each node (except the two nodes at the
ends) has two neighbours, one each to its left and right.

23) What is Diameter ?

Answer: The diameter of a network is the maximum distance between any two processing
nodes in the network. The distance between two processing nodes is defined as the shortest
path (in terms of number of links) between them.

24) What Connectivity ?

Answer: The connectivity of a network is a measure of the multiplicity of paths between any
two processing nodes. A network with high connectivity is desirable, because it lowers
contention for communication resources.

25) What is Bisection-Width ?

Answer: The bisection width of a network is defined as the minimum number of
communication links that must be removed to partition the network into two equal halves.

26) What is Bisection Bandwidth?

Answer: The bisection bandwidth of a network is defined as the minimum volume of
communication allowed between any two halves of the network. It is the product of the
bisection width and the channel bandwidth. Bisection bandwidth of a network is also
sometimes referred to as cross-section bandwidth.
27) What is start up time ?
Answer: The startup time is the time required to handle a message at the sending and
receiving nodes. This includes the time to prepare the message (adding header, trailer, and
error correction information), the time to execute the routing algorithm, and the time to
establish an interface between the local node and the router. This delay is incurred only once
for a single message transfer.

28) What is per-hop time ?

Answer: After a message leaves a node, it takes a finite amount of time to reach the next
node in its path. The time taken by the header of a message to travel between two
directly-connected nodes in the network is called the per-hop time. It is also known as node
latency.

29) What is per word transfer time ?

Answer: If the channel bandwidth is r words per second, then each word takes time tw = 1/r
to traverse the link. This time is called the per-word transfer time. This time includes
network as well as buffering time.

30) In order to optimize the cost of message transfer what we have to do ?

Answer:
● 1. Communicate in bulk. That is, instead of sending small messages and paying a
startup cost ts for each, we want to aggregate small messages into a single large
message and amortize the startup latency across a larger message. This is because on
typical platforms such as clustersand message-passing machines, the value of ts is
much larger than those of th or tw.
● 2. Minimize the volume of data. To minimize the overhead paid in terms of per-word
transfer time tw, it is desirable to reduce the volume of data communicated as much
as possible.
● 3. Minimize distance of data transfer. Minimize the number of hops l that a message
must traverse.

31) What is Routing ?

Answer: A routing mechanism determines the path a message takes through the network to
get from the source to the destination node. It takes as input a message's source and
destination nodes. It may also use information about the state of the network. It returns one
or more paths through the network from the source to the destination node.

32) What is store-and forward routing ?

Answer: In store-and-forward routing, when a message is traversing a path with multiple
links, each intermediate node on the path forwards the message to the next node after it
has received and stored the entire message.

33) What is Snoopy cache system ?

Answer: Snoopy caches are typically associated with multiprocessor systems based on
broadcast interconnection networks such as a bus or a ring. In such systems, all processors
snoop on (monitor) the bus for transactions. This allows the processor to make state
transitions for its cache-blocks.
34) What is False Sharing ?
Answer: False sharing refers to the situation in which different processors update different
parts of the same cache-line.

35) What are the protocols used in the cache coherence system ?
Answer: The protocols used in cache coherence system are (a) Invalidate protocol and (b)
Updateprotocol.

36) What is Routing mechanism?

Answer: A routing mechanism determines the path a message takes through the network to
get from the source to the destination node.

37) What are the classifications of Routing mechanism ?

Answer: Routing mechanisms can be classified as minimal or non-minimal. A minimal
routing mechanism always selects one of the shortest paths between the source and the
destination. In a minimal routing scheme, each link brings a message closer to its
destination, but the scheme can lead to congestion in parts of the network. A non-minimal
routing scheme, in contrast, may route the messagealong a longer path to avoid network
congestion.

38) Differentiate between deterministic routing and adaptive routing ?

Anwser: A deterministic routing scheme determines a unique path for a message, based on
its source and destination. It does not use any information regarding the state of the
network. Deterministic schemes may result in uneven use of the communication resources
in a network. In contrast, an adaptive routing scheme uses information regarding the current
state of the network to determine the path of the message. Adaptive routing detects
congestion in the network and routes messages around it.

39) Define congestion, dilation and expansion of mapping of a graph ?

Answer: The maximum number of edges mapped onto any edge in E' is called the
congestion of the mapping.
The maximum number of links in E' that any edge in E is mapped onto is called the dilation
of themapping.
The ratio of the number of nodes in the set V' to that in set V is called the expansion of the
mapping.

40) Define Decomposition and Tasks ?

Answer: The process of dividing a computation into smaller parts, some or all of which may
potentially be executed in parallel, is called decomposition.
Tasks are programmer-defined units of computation into which the main computation is
subdivided by means of decomposition.