A separate OS, or a separate instantiation of the same OS, runs on each
CPU.
bound multiprocessing (BMP)
A single instantiation of an OS manages all CPUs
simultaneously, but you can lock individual applications or threads to
a specific CPU.
discrete (or traditional) multiprocessor system
A system that has separate physical processors hooked up in
multiprocessing mode over a board-level bus.
hard thread affinity
A user-specified binding of a thread to a set of processors, done
by means of a runmask.
Contrast soft thread affinity.
inherit mask
A bitmask that specifies which processors a thread's children can run on.
Contrast runmask.
multicore system
A chip that has one physical processor with multiple CPUs
interconnected over a chip-level bus.
runmask
A bitmask that indicates which processors a thread can run on.
Contrast inherit mask.
soft thread affinity
The scheme whereby the microkernel tries to dispatch a thread to the
processor where it last ran, in an
attempt to reduce thread migration from one processor to
another, which can affect cache performance.
Contrast hard thread affinity.
symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)
A single instantiation of an OS manages all CPUs
simultaneously, and applications can float to any of them.
![[Previous]](prev.gif)
![[Contents]](contents.gif)
![[Index]](keyword_index.gif)
![[Next]](next.gif)
