Models of Machines and Modules for Mapping to Minimise Makespan in Multicomputers

It is now more than a quarter of a century since researchers started publishing papers on mapping strategies for distributing computation across the computation resource of multiprocessor systems. There exists a large body of literature on the subject, but there is no commonly-accepted framework whereby results in the field can be compared. Nor is it always easy to assess the relevance of a new result to a particular problem. Furthermore, changes in parallel computing technology have made some of the earlier work of less relevance to current multiprocessor systems. Versions of the mapping problem are classified, and research in the field is considered in terms of its relevance to the problem of programming currentlyavailablehardware in the formof adistributedmemorymultiple instruction stream multiple data stream computer: amulticomputer.