Summary

In the 1980s, parallel processing moved into the mainstream of computing technologies. The rapid increases in "killer micro" performance will enable massively parallel systems to meet the needs of high-performance users in the 1990s. However, in order to become a mainstream technology, massively parallel systems must close the programmer productivity gap that exists between them and small-scale parallel systems. The keys to closing this gap are standard languages with parallel extensions, native operating systems (such as UNIX), a powerful software development tool set, and an architecture that supports multiple programming paradigms.