Middlebury College
Department of Computer Science Seminar
Friday, April 14th at 12:20 PM:
Parallel Processing and the Mandelbrot Set
Bob Martin
Professor of Computer Science
Middlebury College
Just a short time ago, the idea of having a computer with parallel processing capability in one's office seemed far-fetched. Currently, however, most of the Intel and PowerPC computers being used on campus have special "vector units" (SSE for Intel, AltiVec for PowerPC) that provide "single instructions to manipulate multiple data" (SIMD) at the same time. In addition, some of the computers being used on campus have multiple CPUs within them. These computers allow even more activities to be performed concurrently.
In this seminar, we will illustrate how the famous fractal known as the Mandelbrot Set can be drawn four times faster by using a vector unit in a single CPU, two times faster using a dual processor computer, eight times faster using both vector units in a dual processor computer, and roughly sixteen times faster using a small two-computer parallel processing cluster.
Friday, April 14, 2006
12:20 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.
McCardell Bicentennial Hall 538
Lunch will be provided at 12:05 p.m.
All are welcome to attend!
This event is supported by the Computer Science Enrichment Fund