Parallel Computing in Chemistry

This paper intends to discuss the role of parallel computing in computational chemistry. As the terminology implies computational chemistry is heavily dependent on the computational power available. Much of the field involved running programs and applications on single processor systems. Even though processor power has improved steadily (Moores Law [1]) over the years, the need for more CPU power has driven researchers to take advantage of the parallel paradigm. When one thinks of parallel processing images of large, room sized supercomputers come to mind. Companies like Cray [2], IBM [3], SGI [4] provide such machines which are undoubtably hugely powerful. However these are not the only types of parallel machines available. In later sections the different types of parallel machine designs will be briefly discussed along with their advantages and disadvantages. However parallel machines are not the only component to a successful setup for computational chemistry (and for that matter, any field). The software techniques also play a vital role in such applications. In subsequent sections I discuss the available software and applications.