[内容简介]

"This book investigates current and emerging research in the field, as well as the application of this technology to a variety of areas by highlighting a broad range of concepts"-- Provided by publisher.

[读者评论]

This large and comprehensive book contains a diverse collection of chapters reviewing many facets of the supercomputing field. It starts with an overview of the field that contains chapters overviewing the field, its history and its challenges, and has an appendix of the 500 biggest supercomputers in the world. It contains numerous chapters describing various applications. These range from nuclear engineering to biocomputing to energy networks and more. A section on theory contains chapters that cover important aspects although readers with a primary interest in theory will want to supplement their reading with other sources to cover all aspects of the topic. A concluding section devoted to leadership and philosophy in the supercomputing field provides a unique perspectice - icing on the cake.---评论者：Book Reader

I teach supercomputing courses online through preptorial dot org, and have had a devil of a time finding good, up to date, relatively inexpensive supercomputing texts. This text is far from inexpensive-- I got it like new on the marketplace when it first came out for $120, it is generally here in 2016 well over $200 (trending to $300 in some cases!), and my student's purchases average about $150.

Is it worth $300? Well, for a subject that represents a lot of the future of the planet (from cold fusion to data mining to computational math, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, etc.), I'm astonished at how few texts exist in this field. It is NOT one of the Springer rip offs that cost $250 for a 50 page monograph, this text weighs a ton, is way oversized at 9" x 11.5 inches quality hardbound, with over 600 pages of content. However, almost 200 pages of that is a list with specs on the top 500 supercomputers in the world, a list the authors acknowledge is available and updated at top500 dot org. If you are in the field, the list is a must, especially for the sake of contact and collaboration. The bib also is up to date at this writing, and the best you'll find in print in one place, although again, it is either robust or padded depending on your POV, as it has many references that are more central to applications than computing (ie how humans think, how scheduling works, etc.).

The book IS a series of articles, and as such, is focused and specific in the areas of expertise of the many paper authors, but also has additional research citations and bib materials in those fields. It broadly covers the key areas of research on the app side, like energy, bioinformatics, data mining, etc. and as such is somewhat vertical, meaning missing a broad overview with depth in each area, which would take 30 texts.

Since my courses cover the "guts" of supercomputing, from chips to blades, circuits, languages, interpreters, compilers, DSLs, cooling and various levels of abstraction driven BY the applications, those topics have to be sourced from the many fine bib references and monograph references rather than the text by itself. If you combine these references with the now very out of date Scientific American book on supercomputing available here on Amazon for a penny (Understanding Supercomputing (Science Made Accessible), you can get just about everything you need to understand the field with a lot of breadth and some depth. The type is medium, not too small or large, and given the paucity of up to date references on this topic, I'd recommend it for any serious researcher or teacher in the field. For self study, in any depth, there are few other resources. The wikipedia supercomputer article gives 100 references with few books and supercomputing dot biz only lists 9 books total! So, if you pass on this, it will mean extensive web study to get to the most current articles and info. Don't get me wrong, I and my students are on a budget, but getting this much information in one place, edited by the high quality of the authors writing the articles here, who are top researchers in the field, is very difficult. It is well worth the $120 I found it for, I give a pass to some of my students who can't afford the $270 and let them do the bib work from my own notes. It really is one of a kind, and other texts that are such (eg. in the legal field) go for $600 plus. I guarantee it would be that much if it were a Springer text! So expensive, yes, a deal, yes, worth it, yes if you really are into, or getting into, this field.----评论者 Let's Compare Options Preptorial