Minimizing Overhead in Parallel Algorithms Through Overlapping Communication/computation

Abstract: "One of the major goals in the design of parallel processing machines and algorithms is to reduce the effects of the overhead introduced when a given problem is parallelized. A key contributor to overhead is communication time. Many architectures try to reduce this overhead by minimizing the actual time for communication, including latency and bandwidth. Another approach is to hide communication by overlapping it with computation. This paper presents the Proteus parallel computer and its effective use of communication hiding through overlapping communication/computation techniques. These techniques are easily extended for use in compiler support of parallel programming. We also address the complexity or rather simplicity, in achieving complete exchange on the Proteus Machine."