Flynn's Taxonomy - Further Divisions

Further Divisions

As of 2006, all the top 10 and most of the TOP500 supercomputers are based on a MIMD architecture.

Some further divide the MIMD category into the following categories:

Single Program, Multiple Data (SPMD)

Multiple autonomous processors simultaneously executing the same program (but at independent points, rather than in the lockstep that SIMD imposes) on different data. Also referred to as 'Single Process, multiple data' - the use of this terminology for SPMD is erroneous and should be avoided, as SPMD is a parallel execution model and assumes multiple cooperating processes executing a program. SPMD is the most common style of parallel programming. The SPMD model and the term was proposed by Frederica Darema. Gregory F. Pfister was a manager of the RP3 project, and Darema was part of the RP3 team.

Multiple Program Multiple Data (MPMD)

Multiple autonomous processors simultaneously operating at least 2 independent programs. Typically such systems pick one node to be the "host" ("the explicit host/node programming model") or "manager" (the "Manager/Worker" strategy), which runs one program that farms out data to all the other nodes which all run a second program. Those other nodes then return their results directly to the manager. An example of this would be the Sony PlayStation 3 game console, with its SPU/PPU processor architecture.

Even further subdivisions are sometimes considered.