CALL FOR PAPERS
                             Special Issue of
                                INFORMATICA
            on Parallel Computing with Optical Interconnections


Communications among processors in a parallel computing system  are  always
the  main  design issue when a parallel system is built or a parallel algo-
rithm is designed.  With  advances in silicon and Ga-As technologies,  pro-
cessor   speed  will  soon  reach the   gigahertz (GHz) range.  Traditional
metal-based communication technology used in parallel computing systems  is
becoming  a  potential  bottleneck.  This requires  either that significant
progress need to be   made in  the    traditional  interconnects,  or  that
new  interconnect  technologies, such  as optics, be introduced in parallel
computing systems.

Fiber optic communications offer a combination of high bandwidth, low error
probability,  and  gigabit  transmission capacity and have been used exten-
sively in wide-area networks.  Advances in optical and optoelectronic tech-
nologies  indicates  that   they  could  also  be  used as interconnects in
parallel computers.  In fact, many commercial massively parallel  computers
such  as the Cray T3D use optical technology in their communication subsys-
tems.  Papers in this special issue will be selected to focus on the poten-
tial  for  using  optical interconnections in massively parallel processing
systems, and their effect on system and  algorithm  design.   

The topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

      Various optical interconnections,
      Optical pipelined buses,
      Multistage interconnection networks,
      Reconfigurable optical architectures,
      Embedding and mapping of applications and algorithms,
      Emulation of different models,
      Algorithms and applications exploiting parallel optical connections,
      Data distribution and partitioning,
      Task scheduling,
      Performance Evaluation,
      Embedding of other architectures,
      New analytical methods for optical interconnections,
      Scalability analysis,
      Lower bound,
      Computational and communication complexities.

Publication is scheduled for an issue in 1998.   Four  copies  of  complete
manuscripts   should  be  sent  to  one of the guest editors  (see  address
below)  by  May 15,  1997.  All manuscripts  must  conform  to  the  normal
submission requirements of INFORMATICA.  Notification of acceptance will be
sent by October 15, 1997.

Guest Editors of the Special Issue:

For North & South America, Australia:

Professor Yi Pan, Computer Science Department, The  University  of  Dayton,
Dayton, OH 45469-2160, USA, Email: pan@hype.cps.udayton.edu

Professor Keqin Li,  Dept.  of  Mathematics  and  Computer  Science,  State
University  of  New  York,  New  Paltz,  New  York  12561-2499, USA, Email:
li@mcs.newpaltz.edu

For Europe, Africa, Asia:

Professor Mounir Hamdi, Department of Computer Science, Hong  Kong  Univer-
sity of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Email:
hamdi@cs.ust.hk