Problems in MIMD Architectures
Scalability
- Physical scaling - can I physically add more processing elements, memory elements to the system?
- Performance scaling - assuming that I can add more PEs, MEs will I see a corresponding increase in performance
Latency
- In message passing architectures, how long does it take for a message to get from point A to Point B?
- In shared memory architectures, how long does it take for a memory access?
- Even though all memory accesses look the same to the programmer, there will be differences in access time depending on which memory location is accessed!!