Performance
In situations where more than one program executes at the same time, an SMP system will have considerably better performance than a uni-processor because different programs can run on different CPUs simultaneously.
In cases where an SMP environment processes many jobs, administrators often experience a loss of hardware efficiency. Software programs have been developed to schedule jobs so that the processor utilization reaches its maximum potential. Good software packages can achieve this maximum potential by scheduling each CPU separately, as well as being able to integrate multiple SMP machines and clusters.
Access to RAM is serialized; this and cache coherency issues causes performance to lag slightly behind the number of additional processors in the system.
Read more about this topic: Symmetric Multiprocessing
Famous quotes containing the word performance:
“O world, world! thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so loved, and the performance so loathed?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“So long as the source of our identity is external—vested in how others judge our performance at work, or how others judge our children’s performance, or how much money we make—we will find ourselves hopelessly flawed, forever short of the ideal.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall.... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn’t do if your life depended on it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)