Perspectives on parallel computing

Operations research is one problem domain that is likely to benefit from advances in parallel computing. We briefly review what has been achieved in recent years and try to sketch what may be expected in the near future. We argue that the lack of uniformity in available architectures is the main obstacle for the breakthrough of parallel computing. Also, formal techniques will have to be developed for the design and implementation of efficient parallel algorithms, and more realism will be required in theoretical models of parallel computation.