Parallel Computing

The field concerned with performing many computations simultaneously by dividing a large problem into smaller ones that can be solved at the same time. Michael Flynn's 1966 taxonomy classifying architectures by instruction and data stream (SISD, SIMD, MISD, MIMD) is the field's most commonly cited defining framework, though experimental parallel hardware such as the Gamma 60 fork-join machine (1957) predates it. The source is explicit that parallel computing, distributed computing and concurrent computing overlap substantially with no single clean line between them, which this atlas records honestly rather than inventing a sharper distinction than the field itself draws; distributed computing is kept as the atlas's separate existing field for the networked, independently-owned-machine case.