High Performance Computing (RISC Architectures, Optimization & Benchmarks)

Even if you never touch a line of code, High Performance Computing will help you make sense of the newest generation of workstations. A must for anyone who needs to worry about computer performance, this book covers everything, from the basics of modern workstation architecture, to structuring benchmarks, to squeezing more performance out of critical applications. It also explains what a good compiler can do--and what you have to do yourself. The author also discusses techniques for improving memory access patterns and taking advantage of parallelism. Another valuable section of the book discusses the benchmarking process, or how to evaluate a computer's performance. Kevin Dowd discusses several of the "standard" industry benchmarks, explaining what they measure and what they don't. He also explains how to set up your own benchmark: how to structure the code, how to measure the results, and how to interpret them.

Download