It can be inferred from the passage that one of the reasons massively parallel computers had not been used to model o...

Irina on August 23, 2019

@Samir-Ghani,

It can be inferred from the passage that one of the reasons massively parallel computers had not been used to model oil field flow prior to 1989 is that..

Let's look at (B) and (E).

(B) "the possibility of using a network of smaller computers to solve computationally difficult problems have not yet been considered."

Incorrect. The passage tells us that in the 1980s, Emeagwali already achieved breakthroughs in the design of parallel computer systems, prior to 1989 (lines 6-8). It is thus likely this possibility has been considered to solve a computationally difficult problem, such as the oil flow.

(E) "smaller computers can interfere with one another when they are connected in parallel to solve a computationally difficult problem."

Correct. The passage tells us that to model oil flow, Emeagwali had to address "one of the great difficulties of parallel computing ..dividing up the tasks among the separate smaller computers so that they do not interfere with each other" (lines 33-35). We can infer that prior to his original solution to this problem, this issue presented a major hurdle to using parallel computing for oil flow modeling.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Claire on August 15 at 09:31PM

This was an excellent explanation. This was very helpful, thank you!