A review is presented of different types of software components, namely, abstract data type, functional, interface and control modules. Also, the type of parallelism which is useful in each case is demonstrated. Such parallel algorithms can often be directly implemented in hardware using VLSI technology. A discussion is presented of two methods of providing a high-performance implementation of abstract data type modules. The first approach uses broadcasting sequential processes to yield simple implementations which provide rapid response for all the operations of the abstraction. The other method is based on multilevel data structures and maintenance processes. A performance model for multilevel data structures is developed, and some experimental result are presented.
