High-performance computing for Economists: Parallel processing

Lars Vilhuber, based on previous presentation by Kevin McKinney
2015/8/17-2015/8/19

Why parallel processing?

diminishing Increase in CPU power

Single-core performance growth has slowed. More cost-effective to add multiple cores.

Threads vs processes

Both can be used for parallel processing

  • A process can launch multiple threads
    • Threads run only on the same node
    • Threads run within a process and have access to the memory and resources of that process
  • A user or program can launch multiple processes (same or different node) and communicate via IPC or MPI
  • Different tools for working with threads and processes, although the goal is the same

Parallel execution