H I S ll 'J'"-

1.3.2

SMP Systems
a n

What do you do when your application runs out of C P U or R A M resources within a UP computer system? (One of the fundamental laws of c o m p u t i n g is: " A program w i l l expand to till || memory or use all possible C P U cycles.") One answer to this question involves another step i one or more processors into the system architecture, as depicted in Figure I - 2 . A computer system is referred to as "symmetric'* if all processors are equally capable of accessing global shared memory. The operating system software on an S M P machine requires the protection of data and other resources that m i g h t be accessed by multiple processors at once, and is therefore more complex than an operating system for a UP system An SMP system also may require a more eomplex hardware infrastructure to support multiple CPUs. The system bus. which is one of the points of contention between the elements ot the system, must support full-speed access to R A M and I/O for both (or all) processors, or system performance and scaling ma\ suffer. The practical sealing of an S M P system is limited by the central system bus or crossbar connection between the CPUs, memory, and I/O subsystem*.A* we shall see. scaling is also a very important aspect provided b> clusters. In larger SMP systems, the system bus is sometimes replaced b\ a crossbar switch <o improve performance. A crossbar is essentially a n o n l o c k i n g switch that allows direct, highspeed connections between multiple ports simultaneouslv. Each connection is dedicate ing transparent access between CPUs, memory, or I/O up to the m a x i m u m number ol the evolution of computer systems, c u l m i n a t i n g in the arrival of S M P systems. SMP systems add