%T Experiments in Multicore and Distributed Parallel Processing using JCSP
%A  Jon Kerridge
%E Peter H. Welch,  Adam T. Sampson,  Jan Bækgaard Pedersen,  Jon Kerridge,  Jan F. Broenink,  Frederick R. M. Barnes
%B Communicating Process Architectures 2011
%X It is currently very difficult to purchase any form of
   computer system
be it, notebook, laptop, desktop server or
   high performance computing
system that does not contain a
   multicore processor. Yet the designers of
applications, in
   general, have very little experience and knowledge of
how to
   exploit this capability. Recently, the Scottish Informatics
   and
Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) issued a challenge to
   investigate the
ability of developers to parallelise a
   simple Concordance algorithm.
Ongoing work had also shown
   that the use of multicore processors for
applications that
   have internal parallelism is not as straightforward as
might
   be imagined. Two applications are considered: calculating pi
   using
Monte Carlo methods and the SICSA Concordance
   application. The ease with
which parallelism can be
   extracted from a single application using both
single
   multicore processors and distributed networks of such
   multicore
processors is investigated. It is shown that naive
   application of
parallel programming techniques does not
   produce the desired results and
that considerable care has
   to be taken if multicore systems are to
result in improved
   performance. Meanwhile the use of distributed systems
tends
   to produce more predictable and reasonable benefits
   resulting from
parallelisation of applications.