Parallel and distributed computing are similar technologies designed to increase the amount of processing power available for a specific task. Generally, these methods are used to solve problems that require large computational capabilities.
When the problem is divided into many small pieces, individual sections of the problem can be calculated by many processors simultaneously. This allows more processing power to be exercised on the problem than can be provided by a single processor.
The main difference between parallel and distributed processing is that parallel configurations include many processors within a single system, while distributed configurations exploit the processing power of many computers simultaneously.
Let's look at the other differences:
| Parallel processing | Distributed processing |
| Parallel processing has the... |