Parallel /parallel tags

Question

The tag parallel has at least three meanings. I propose to disambiguate them and get rid of parallel.

• Running programs or threads in parallel, i.e. exploiting multiple cores on one computer → parallelism
• GNU Parallel → gnu-parallel
• Joey Hess's Parallel → moreutils-parallel

To add to the current confusion, there is a tag parallels which is about the OSX virtualization software; I don't propose to change that tag, and the removal of parallel should make it stand out a bit more.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

Sounds very reasonable, but I would suggest parallelization instead of parallelism. Parallelism can mean many things:

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. The quality or condition of being parallel; a parallel relationship.

n. Likeness, correspondence, or similarity in aspect, course, or tendency.

n. Grammar The use of identical or equivalent syntactic constructions in corresponding clauses or phrases.

n. Philosophy The doctrine that to every mental change there corresponds a concomitant but causally unconnected physical alteration.

And I have never seen it used in the context of parallel computing (which doesn't mean it isn't used of course). Parallelization, on the other hand, means:

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License2

n. The act of making things parallel.

n. The act of making operations work in parallel, particularly in, but not limited to, computing.

This NGram shows a clear spike in the usage of parallelization just when it started becoming common in the computer world:

Finally, the Wikipedia entry for parallelization redirects to its page on parallel computing while its page for parallelism takes you to a disambiguation entry.