implicit parallelism

parallel A feature of a programming language for a parallelprocessing system which decides automatically which parts to

run in parallel.

The best way of providing implicit parallelism is still (1995)

an active research topic. The problem is to generate the

right number of parallel tasks of the right size (or

"granularity"). Too many tasks and the system gets bogged

down in house-keeping, or memory for waiting tasks runs out,

too few tasks and processors are left idle.

The best performance is usually achieved with explicitparallelism where the programmer can annotate his program to

indicate which parts should be executed as independent

parallel tasks.

(1995-02-16)