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Multiprocessing Multiprocessing Bob Moses Operating Systems Concepts Saturday Section Pittsburgh Campus Multiprocessing refers to a computer system's ability to
applications use hardware ? keyboard, mouse, monitor. 3) Managing memory, i.e., multitasking, multiprocessing and threads 4) Managing and executing applications 5)
benefits to network administrators including support for multiple processors and symmetric multiprocessing, centralized management of network objects through the
Quite often in fact, the ratings are lower. Here are the reasons. Mainframes support symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) with as many as 32 central processors in one
between the processors, as well as software to divide the tasks among them. A practical multiprocessing system should be as simple as possible and require a minimum
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Multiprocessing
Bob Moses
Operating Systems Concepts
Saturday Section
Pittsburgh Campus
Multiprocessing refers to a computer system's ability to support more than one process or program at the same time. Multiprocessing operating systems enable several programs to run concurrently. UNIX is one of the most widely used multiprocessing systems, but there are many others, including OS/2 for high-end personal computers and Windows NT for work groups. Multiprocessing systems are much more complicated than single-process systems because the operating system must allocate resources to competing processes in the most efficient manner. (IBM Dictionary of Computing, Tenth Edition, McGraw-Hill, (1994)).
Types of Multiprocessing
Symmetric multiprocessing refers to the processing of programs by multiple processors that share a common operating system, memory and data path. A single copy of the operating system controls all processors. Symmetric multiprocessing units of this type are also referred to as "shared everything" systems. These systems usually do not exceed 16 processors.
(Image courtesy of Sequent Manufacturing)
The most common uses of these types of systems are commercial servers of web applications such used in on line commerce. The advantages of this particular configuration are that they can be easily upgraded by the addition of more processors. These processors are available to execute any of the given processes as soon as the operating system recognizes and configures the new hardware. However, the limitations of such a configuration are that with shared memory, there is a strong emphasis on data manipulation. As each processor competes for a limited amount of shared memory, this limits the speed and up-gradability of such a system. Manufacturers must rely on the development of faster, higher capacity memory to overcome this disadvantage. Currently symmetric...
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