Shared vs. Distributed Memory

P

P

P

P

P

P

BUS

Memory

M

P

M

P

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P

Network

Shared memory - single address space. All processors have access to a pool of shared memory. (Ex: CRAY PVPs, SGI PowerChallenge)

Distributed memory - each processor has it’s own local memory. Must do message passing to exchange data between processors. (Ex: CRAY T3E, IBM SP, clusters)

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