Entry Brailsford:EPODD-2-1-25 from epodd.bib

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BibTeX entry

@Article{Brailsford:EPODD-2-1-25,
  author =       "D. F. Brailsford and D. R. Evans",
  title =        "Parallel Processing in Document Formatting: An
                 Experiment Using {PIC}",
  journal =      j-EPODD,
  volume =       "2",
  number =       "1",
  pages =        "25--46",
  month =        apr,
  year =         "1989",
  CODEN =        "EPODEU",
  ISSN =         "0894-3982",
  bibsource =    "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/epodd.bib",
  abstract =     "The manipulation of text and graphics within a
                 computer provides opportunities for the exploitation of
                 parallel processing. It is straightforward to identify
                 blocks of material such as complete diagrams or
                 paragraphs of text which can be processed in parallel
                 and which have modest requirements for synchronization
                 and communication between the blocks. The features of a
                 problem which lead to an elegant and efficient
                 application of parallelism are identified, including
                 good locality of reference, a small `state vector' of
                 shared global variables and a clear relationship
                 between the material on the page and the `cost' of
                 processing it. This last-named attribute enables a
                 problem to be partitioned among multiple processors by
                 a static compile-time analysis rather than relying on
                 costly run-time allocation strategies. The {\PIC}
                 program for line diagrams has been modified to allow
                 for such a static allocation and to permit
                 synchronization and rendezvous between multiple
                 invocations of the program. The aim of this was to
                 investigate whether worthwhile gains in performance
                 would result from subdividing a diagram drawn with
                 {\PIC} and then processing the various portions in
                 parallel. A series of benchmark timings is presented
                 which show the degree of overlap obtainable in
                 processing separate parts of a diagram together with
                 the inherent limits to parallelism imposed by the
                 `atomic' entities in {\PIC} and the inevitable
                 communication overheads between the parallel processes.
                 The design features of the {\PIC} language are
                 identified which made it suitable for these researches
                 and we are able to draw certain general conclusions
                 about desirable properties of text and graphic entities
                 which are to be processed in parallel. This in turn
                 enables us to identify design features of the
                 underlying software which will facilitate parallel
                 processing.",
  keywords =     "Document processing, Parallel processing, {\PIC},
                 Benchmarking",
}

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