Click on a theme or a project in the table below for more information.
Theme PDC: Parallel and Distributed Computing
This theme is concerned with the study of computer
networks. Attention is focused on the relation
between the speed of communication in the network
and that of each of the networked computers
separately. The term distributed systems
was traditionally used for systems in which the
speed of communication of the network is much
lower than that of each node, while the term
parallel system was reserved for systems
with a speed of the same order as that of the
networked computer systems. Distance played a
role, because the bandwidth of communication
channels covering a large distance used to be
orders of magnitude smaller than the bandwidth at
closer range. Aspects of autonomy of the linked
computer system are important, hence communication
protocols and federation are central research
topics. For parallel systems, the essential
property is that a computer node is not autonomous
in that it constitutes part of a global system.
Issues such as load balancing of tasks over nodes,
performance modeling and optimization play an
important role in this respect.
The modern fibre based communication technology will
radically change these developments, and will
cause the distinction between parallel and
distributed systems based on hard ware features to
fade away. From a research perspective, the focus
will shift towards Large Scale Parallel and
Distributed systems with nodes that may physically
be spread all over the world; for that reason,
such networks especially if used as a parallel
system, are also known as computational Grids. It
is to be expected that such global systems will be
used for a myriad of applications, including for
computational tasks in large-scale simulation, for
transfer of information based on federative
database systems and for a range of Internet and
WEB applications.
BRICKS Projects in PDC:
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