Abstract
The evolution of hardware organization is traced from early uniprocessor systems with no parallelism through several stages of both single and multiple computer systems each providing a higher degree of concurrency. A multiprocessor is then defined as a specific class of system organization in terms of both its hardware and software characteristics. The basic hardware organizations used for the interconnection of the functional units in a multiprocessor are discussed as well as the organization of other parallel systems, such as associative, array, and pipeline processors. Three types of operating systems for multiprocessors are discussed and the problem of software support for exploiting parallelism in program structure is introduced.
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References
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Enslow, P.H. (1976). Multiprocessors and Other Parallel Systems an Introduction and Overview. In: Händler, W., Bell, R.K. (eds) Computer Architecture. Informatik-Fachberichte, vol 4. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-66400-7_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-66400-7_8
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