Parallel Scientific Computing in C++ and MPI: A Seamless Approach to Parallel Algorithms... at Dominant Systems Book Store

'This book is a valuable addition to the literature on numerical algorithms.' Numerical Algorithms

'There is plenty of material for a two-semester sequence, or selected chapters could be used for a one-semester course on numerical linear algebra. The presentation is clear, practical, and lively this text would be a very useful reference for statistics students and professionals) seeking to take their statistical computing skills into the parallel realm.' Journal of the American Statistical Association

Customer Reviews & Comments
The authors attempted to combine introductory material in C++, numerical methods and parallel computing. That is quite a brave endevaour. They certainly break the new ground writing an introductory material for a "simulation scientist", but I believe they have achieved mixed success. On the one hand, the material they present on all subjects is really top quality, packed with 100% usefull information. Bibliography is also very good and usefull. But the organisation of the book is quite confusing. They introduce all the topics toogether - throughtout the book. Hence each chapter introduces some numerical algorithms, few new concepts in C++ and eventually MPI. I beleive a novice would experience serious difficulties following it. For example, authors introduce objects before introducing curly braces "{}" as scope delimiters and before semicolon ";" as statement delimiters. Further, very soon after introducung the very basic concepts in C++, the authors move on to BLAS. BLAS is usefull, of course, but a novice in C++ may wonder why does he needs libraries written in Fortran, if C++ is a language of the choice for numerical computations. (At least it is claimed so by the authors). Another confusing example is the one of memory memory access. In section 2.2.6 Memory Management, (pg. 41) the authors introduce basic concepts of memory management and how can loop constructs influence the efficiency of the code. Very usefull indeed, no question about it. But very soon bellow, in section 2.2.8 Exploiting the Structure of the Sparse Matrices, they come up with the claim (pg. 58): "... optimization-savy individuals, as the old saying goes, often miss the forest for the threes" :-( Hence, a novice reader might think: "Well, why do I need to worry about the memory management explained just 17 pages above?". My most serious critic of this book by far (and I hope the authors will read this) are the contents pages. The contents list only chapters and first level sub-chapters. Secind level chapters are not present!!! That makes the book very hard to use as a reference material. That is really a pitty, since there is some good material in it which is hard to find and might stay hidden. (For example, the chapter I mentioned above: 2.2.6 Memory management is NOT in the contents, so I had to browse slowly throught the book to find it and refer it here). I suggest the authors introduce: "Contents at a glance" (the present one) and a "Detailed Contents", where one could find references to all the chapters in the book. The contents is THE reason why I gave this book 3 stars instead of 4. One it lost on the confusing organisation of the book. I think the authors should have organised the book in four parts: 1 - Numerical algorithms, 2 - C++ and 3 - Parallel computing with MPI, 4 - Advanced topics. Part 1 could introduce numerical algorithms and have pointers to their implementations in Part 2 and corresponding parallel implementations in Part 3. Part 2 and 3 could have started with introductions, which a reader already familiar with those subjects, could skip. Part 4, could bring advanced topics, such as optimisation, BLAS, etc. Bottom line, it is: - brave and usefull endevaour, - full of excellent material, - organized confusingly, - and has a very poor contents. Buy it if you are simulation scientist or teacher, but prepare to struggle with its organisation and contents.

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