MGMT 1040 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Multiprocessing, Hyper-Threading
8 May 2018
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MGMT 1040 Chapter 4 Notes – Summary
Introduction
• STM is also known as hyper threading.
• STM is particularly useful in dealing with cache stalls, because the CPU can be kept busy
working on the alternative thread or threads.
• The operating system manages STM in a manner similar to SMP.
• This technique is called simultaneous thread multiprocessing (STM).
• Since STM operates within a single CPU and SMP operates between CPUs, STM and SMP
can be used together.
• For general purpose computing, the symmetrical configuration has many advantages.
• Because every CPU is equal, every CPU has equal access to the operating system.
• Any CPU can execute any task and can process any interrupt.
• Processors are all kept equally busy, since each processor can dispatch its own work as it
needs it.
• Thus, the workload is well balanced.
• It is easy to implement fault-tolerant computing with a symmetrical configuration
• Critical operations are simply dispatched to all CPUs simultaneously.
• Furthermore, a failure in a single CPU may reduce overall system performance
• It will not cause system failure.
• As an interesting aside, note that a program may execute on a different CPU each time it
is dispatched
• Although most SMP systems provide a means to lock a program onto a particular CPU, if
desired.
• Thus, the symmetrical configuration offers important capabilities for multiprocessing
• Maximum utilization of each CPU, flexibility, high reliability, and optional support for
fault-tolerant computing.
• Most modern general purpose multiprocessing systems are SMP systems.
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