The Future is Parallel

Adverts for PCs and laptops often stress the fact they contain a dual core processor or in larger systems multiple processors. What does this mean for the user? Can this capability be easily exploited? Does it really make a difference in normal use? What is parallel computing? In attempting to answer these questions, the speaker reflects on the nature of the world in which we live and how our existing models tend to ignore its parallel nature, despite it often being much easier to build a parallel model. The history of parallelism in computing is as old as computing itself and yet we are only just starting to see it being exploited in consumer products. Why? Parallel systems have been available since the 1970's together with techniques for using them effectively and correctly and yet it is still considered hard. This lecture looks at parallelism and how we can use it to our benefit, and it also explores this exciting world using robots that are controlled using parallel techniques.