How can we provide portable software for dense linear algebra computations that is efficient on a wide range of modern distributed-memory computers? Answering this question -- and providing the appropriate software -- has been an objective of the ScaLAPACK project.
The ScaLAPACK software has been designed specifically to achieve high efficiency for a wide range of modern distributed-memory computers. Examples of such computers include the Cray T3D and T3E computers, the IBM Scalable POWERparallel SP series, the Intel iPSC and Paragon computers, the nCube-2/3 computer, networks and clusters of workstations (NoWs and CoWs ), and ``piles'' of PCs (PoPCs) .