What Do You Know About Parallel Processing?

Despite the astounding evolution of computer technology over the past half century, the vast majority of them are still driven by single CPUs. A single CPU executes instructions serially, or one at a time, whether I works exclusively on one program or juggles several concurrently.
In the race to develop tomorrow's ever faster computer systems, scientists have developed ways for two or more sets of CPU and memory components to perform tasks in parallel. Instead of relying on one processor to perform a lengthy task, a computer system using parallel processing assigns portions of the problem to several CPUs operating simultaneously.
The market place offers examples of two principal approaches to parallel processing computer systems. One common approach that began several years ago is represented by the Cray-2, a supercomputer that carries a price tag of several million dollars. This computer's parallel design philosophy hooks up a small number of expensive, state of the art CPUs. The Cray-2 uses four such processors, all of which carry out both parallel and serial processing. The second method of parallel processing involves building computers from hundreds or thousands of relatively inexpensive, off the shelf micro processors. Such computers are known as massively parallel processors.