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Symmetric multiprocessing system. Systems operating under a single OS (operating system) with two or more homogeneous processors and with a centralized shared main memory. A symmetric multiprocessor system (SMP) is a system with a pool of homogeneous processors running under a single OS with a centralized, shared main memory.
An early example of a master/slave multiprocessor system of microprocessors is the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 16 desktop computer which came out in February 1982 and ran the multi-user/multi-tasking Xenix operating system, Microsoft's version of UNIX (called TRS-XENIX).
Diagram of a symmetric multiprocessing system. Symmetric multiprocessing or shared-memory multiprocessing [1] (SMP) involves a multiprocessor computer hardware and software architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single, shared main memory, have full access to all input and output devices, and are controlled by a single operating system instance that treats all ...
The diameter of the system is the minimum number of steps it takes for one processor to send a message to the processor that is the farthest away. So, for example, the diameter of a 2-cube is 2. In a hypercube system with eight processors and each processor and memory module being placed in the vertex of a cube, the diameter is 3.
From the software standpoint, hardware support for multithreading is more visible to software, requiring more changes to both application programs and operating systems than multiprocessing. Hardware techniques used to support multithreading often parallel the software techniques used for computer multitasking. Thread scheduling is also a major ...
An asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP or ASMP) system is a multiprocessor computer system where not all of the multiple interconnected central processing units (CPUs) are treated equally. For example, a system might allow (either at the hardware or operating system level) only one CPU to execute operating system code or might allow only one CPU to ...
Uniform memory access (UMA) is a shared memory architecture used in parallel computers.All the processors in the UMA model share the physical memory uniformly. In an UMA architecture, access time to a memory location is independent of which processor makes the request or which memory chip contains the transferred data.
Operating systems ported to the architecture include SGI's IRIX, Microsoft's Windows NT (through v4.0), Windows CE, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, UNIX System V, SINIX, QNX, and MIPS Computer Systems' own RISC/os. In the early 1990s, speculation occurred that MIPS and other powerful RISC processors would overtake the Intel IA-32 architecture.