Revisiting flynn’s classification: The portfolio approach

Abstract

Today, we are reaching the limits of Moore’s law: the progress of parallel components does not grow exponentially as it did continuously during the last decades. This is somehow a paradox since the computing platforms are always more powerful. It simply tells us that the efficiency of parallel programs is becoming less obvious. If we want to continue to solve hard computational problems, the only way is to change the way problems are solved. In this work, we propose to investigate how algorithms portfolio may be a direction to solve hard and large problems. It is also the occasion for us to revisit the well-known Flynn’s classification and clarifying the MISD (Multiple Instructions Single Data) class which was never really well-understood.