Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very insightful!, April 21, 2003
This review is from: Parallel Programming with MPI (Paperback)
This book is a great introduction not only to MPI but to parallel programming itself. Initially, one learns essential concepts of parallel programming, including hardware and network topologies. An MPI version of ``Hello World!'' gently introduces the reader to the mechanics of running MPI programs (if you haven't set up your parallel computing environment yet, this may well be the most time consuming chapter of the book!) In what follows, the author lays out the basics of each topic in parallel programming, followed by MPI-specific details (i.e. which MPI function is used in that situation). Particularly worthy of praise is the example-driven approach, whereby in each chapter a problem is presented (like numerical integration or matrix multiplication), and the author shows how to solve them with techniques taught in that chapter. Some problems are rehashed in other sections/chapters, in order to show different PP techniques to solve them. The book doesn't suffer from the black-box syndrome of hiding implementation details: the reader is usually shown the inner workings of, say, each communication technique, while being advised to use MPI's built-in functions instead of rolling out his own versions. Topics covered include collective communication methods, I/O, debugging, design, performance, parallel algorithms and libraries, and advanced topics in communication. A handy appendix on MPI functions wraps up the book. As an aside, I will be forever grateful to this book due to its clear exposition of the butterfly broadcast method, which helped me understand the Cooley-Tukey iterative version of the FFT (which uses the same butterfly idea), something I had been struggling with for a couple of years. I would have gladly bought the book for this explanation alone.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Comments for Fortran Users, March 4, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Parallel Programming with MPI (Paperback)
As the book description indicates, the text is based on the C language. The Fortran MPI function calls are slightly different (syntatically) than the C equivalents. Fortran users should be aware that these differences are not discussed in the text. However, the sample programs from the text are available in Fortran from the author's web page (referenced in the book).
Aside from this, Parallel Programming With MPI is an easy reading book which introduces the material through working examples. The book also contains a nice introduction to high performance computing and optimization issues. I still have a lot to learn , but I'm glad I bought it!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for MPI beginners, November 9, 2006
This review is from: Parallel Programming with MPI (Paperback)
Pacheco's book is a strong, gently paced introduction to a very complex API. MPI, the message passing interface, is the most common coordination tool for parallel scientific computing. When a Blue Gene programmer has 1,000 or 100,000 processors all working on different parts of one calculation, there's a big problem in getting partial results from where they're computed to where they're needed. That's what MPI is for.
When the problem is so complicated, the solution is also complicated. Pacheco does a good job of breaking MPI down into digestible pieces, starting with the basic send and receive primitives that you'll use most often. He presents each new part of the API in terms of some problem to be solved, keeping a concrete and practical tone to this book. He gradually adds more pieces in terms of more practical exercises: broadcasts and reductions, scatter and gather, data structuring, communicators, and asynchronous IO.
Along the way, Pacheco introduces algorithms that even experienced uniprocessor programmers may not be familiar with, including bitonic sorting and Fox's algorithm for matrix multiplication. This isn't gratuitous intellectual showmanship. It's a pointed demonstration that, when communication barriers change the computation landscape, old paths to solutions may not be the best routes any more. After finishing with the MPI API itself, Pacheco presents debugging techniques and common kinds of support libraries, as well as basic techniques for analyzing the potential and actual acceleration possible for a given problem.
If you're serious about MPI, you'll need the official standard for understanding the fussy details of these complex APIs. That's a pretty brutal way for a beginner to get going, though. This introduces not only the basic concepts of MPI, but also the basics of how to think about highly parallel programming. And, as multi-threaded multi-core multi-processor systems become common, that's an increasing percentage of all programming.
//wiredweird
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
