Recent Trends in Multiprocessor Organisations

This paper reviews some alternatives in tightly-coupled multiprocessor organisations. Specifically, multiple- instruction-multiple data (MIMD) organisations based on the use of various intercommunication networks are considered. A performance degradation from the maximum throughput attainable occurs in any of these MIMD organisations. One major cause of this degradation is external to the organisation and can be identified as the mismatch between the programme parallelism and the machine parallelism. A possible alternative is to have a reconfigurable multiprocessor organisation (RMP). Some current research in RMP design is surveyed. Finally, a novel approach based on the concept of pooled resources is proposed.