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Rating: 
Summary: Beginners Guide to Parallel Programming on Clusters
Review: Clusters of Computers have become an appealing platform for cost-effective parallel computing and more particularly so for teaching parallel processing. At Monash University School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, I am teaching "CSC433: Parallel Systems" subject for BSc Honours students. The course covers various communication models and languages for parallel programming. Cluster Computing is one of the focused topics of this course and I found two books that suits well for this course--both published by Prentice Hall in 1999. The first one is: "High Performance Cluster Computing" by R. Buyya (editor) that I use for teaching cluster computer architecture and systems issue. The second one is "Parallel Programming" by B. Wilkinson and M. Allen that I use for teaching programming clusters using message-passing concepts. I found both books complimentary to each other.B. Wilkinson and M. Allen book discusses key aspects of parallel programming concepts and generic constructs with practical example programs. Each concept has been explained using figures and flow diagrams. The programs illustrated mostly in C using generic parallel programming constructs and popular parallel programming interfaces such as Threads, PVM, and MPI. The authors have also created an excellent web resources home page that offers presentation slides, program source codes, and instructors manual. All these tools make teaching parallel programming course, a pleasing experience. I have no hesitation in recommending this book for anyone serious about teaching parallel programming on clusters.
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Summary: Clear and informative book, but...
Review: The book does quite well in explaining the concepts of parallel computing and programming, and I have very few complaints about anything actually written in the book. (A companion CD with some sample MPI/PVM programs would have been nice.) However, as well as this book is written and organized, it is almost comical to have this size of book (paperback, at that) costing nearly $... If the book would have cost about $.. less and had the companion CD, it would have been five stars.
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Summary: Good book at senior or early grad school level
Review: The book serves as a good introduction to several advanced computing techniques. It isn't for beginners in computer science or networking, and it isn't worth the list price. Unfortunately, the topic isn't something you are likely to find in a career, so it isn't useful to general computer science students.
It is great as a learning book, in-depth enough that you could use it for on-the-job learning. It covers the things you need to know for real-world use. I would have given it 5 stars, except it isn't all that great as a reference; you will probably end up using online help for whatever communications package you use. It's the kind of book you read once or twice, then give away to younger collegues.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book but don't pay full price
Review: This is a really good introduction to Parallel Programming techniques, but its overpriced. Buy it used. This book is used as a textbook in many computer science departments (hence the inflated price) but I found that even with the minimal computer science education I've had (mostly from self-study) I learned a lot and did not find this book overly difficult to follow.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: This would be a great reference manual, but I am using this test in my parallel processing course and the pseudocode is confusing and the MPI functions are introduced with poor descriptions.
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