Nature Inspired Parallel Computing

Parallel computing is more and more important for science and engineering, but it is not used so widely as serial computing. People are used to serial computing and feel parallel computing too difficult to understand, design and use. In fact, they are most familiar with nature, in which all things exist and go on in parallel. If one learns parallel computing before learning serial computing, even if he or she has not read this chapter, they can find that serial computing is more difficult to understand, design and use than parallel computing, for it is not running in the way as the nature we are familiar with. Nature is composed of a large number of objects and events. Events are the spirit of objects; objects the body of events. They are related with each other in nature. Objects can construct or exist in parallel and events can occur or go on in parallel. The parallelism mainly exists in four dimensions including space dimension, application dimension, time dimension, and user dimension. After reading this chapter, even if you have been used to serial computing, you can find that the parallel computing used in your applications is just from nature. This chapter illustrates NIPC (Nature Inspired Parallel Computing) and its applications to help you grasp the methods of applying NIPC to your applications. The authors hope to help you understand and use parallel computing more easily and design and develop parallel software more effectively.