Parallelism in Computer Arithmetic: A Historical Perspective

Many early parallel processing breakthroughs emerged from the quest for faster and higher-throughput arithmetic operations. Additionally, the influence of arithmetic techniques on parallel computer performance can be seen in diverse areas such the bit-serial arithmetic units of early massively parallel SIMD computers, pipelining and pipeline-chaining in vector machines, design of floating-point standards to ensure the accuracy and portability of numerically-intensive programs, and prominence of GPUs in today's top-of-the-line supercomputers. This paper contains a few representative samples of the many interactions and cross-fertilizations between computer-arithmetic and parallel-computation communities by presenting historical perspectives, case studies of state of art and practice, and directions for further collaboration.