Frontiers of massively parallel scientific computation

Practical applications using massively parallel computer hardware first appeared during the 1980s. Their development was motivated by the need for computing power orders of magnitude beyond that available today for tasks such as numerical simulation of complex physical and biological processes, generation of interactive visual displays, satellite image analysis, and knowledge based systems. Representative of the first generation of this new class of computers is the Massively Parallel Processor (MPP). A team of scientists was provided the opportunity to test and implement their algorithms on the MPP. The first results are presented. The research spans a broad variety of applications including Earth sciences, physics, signal and image processing, computer science, and graphics. The performance of the MPP was very good. Results obtained using the Connection Machine and the Distributed Array Processor (DAP) are presented