Lecture-3 Parallel Computer Memory Architecture
Lecture-3 Parallel Computer Memory Architecture
❖Shared Memory
❖Distributed Memory
▪ Multiple processors can operate independently but share the same memory resources.
▪ Changes in a memory location effected by one processor are visible to all other
processors.
▪ Shared memory machines have been classified as UMA and NUMA, based upon memory
access times.
Parallel Computer Memory Architectures
❖ Shared Memory
❖ Advantages
▪ Data sharing between processes is both fast and uniform due to the proximity of memory to
CPUs.
❖ Disadvantages
▪ Primary disadvantage is the lack of scalability between memory and CPUs.
▪ Adding more CPUs can geometrically increases traffic on the shared memory-CPU path, and
for cache coherent systems, geometrically increase traffic associated with cache/memory
management.
▪ Identical processors.
▪ Sometimes called CC-UMA - Cache Coherent UMA. Cache coherent means if one processor updates a location in
shared memory, all the other processors know about the update.
Parallel Computer Memory Architectures
❖ Non-Uniform Memory Access-
(NUMA)-
▪ Often made by physically linking two or more SMPs.
❖ General Characteristics
▪ Processors have their own local memory. Memory addresses in one processor do not map to another
processor, so there is no concept of global address space across all processors.
▪ Because each processor has its own local memory, it operates independently. Changes it makes to
its local memory have no effect on the memory of other processors. Hence, the concept of cache
coherency does not apply.
▪ When a processor needs access to data in another processor, it is usually the task of the
programmer to explicitly define how and when data is communicated. Synchronization between
tasks is likewise the programmer's responsibility.
Parallel Computer Memory Architectures
❖ Distributed Memory
❖ Advantages