Shared Memory Versus Distributed Memory Versus Distributed Shared Memory
The advantage of (distributed) shared memory is that it offers a unified address space in which all data can be found.
The advantage of distributed memory is that it excludes race conditions, and that it forces the programmer to think about data distribution.
The advantage of distributed (shared) memory is that it is easier to design a machine that scales with the algorithm
Distributed shared memory hides the mechanism of communication - it does not hide the latency of communication.
Read more about this topic: Distributed Memory
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