Performance
In situations where more than one program executes at the same time, an SMP system will have considerably better performance than a uni-processor because different programs can run on different CPUs simultaneously.
In cases where an SMP environment processes many jobs, administrators often experience a loss of hardware efficiency. Software programs have been developed to schedule jobs so that the processor utilization reaches its maximum potential. Good software packages can achieve this maximum potential by scheduling each CPU separately, as well as being able to integrate multiple SMP machines and clusters.
Access to RAM is serialized; this and cache coherency issues causes performance to lag slightly behind the number of additional processors in the system.
Read more about this topic: Symmetric Multiprocessing
Famous quotes containing the word performance:
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Kind are her answers,
But her performance keeps no day;
Breaks time, as dancers,
From their own music when they stray.”
—Thomas Campion (1567–1620)
“True balance requires assigning realistic performance expectations to each of our roles. True balance requires us to acknowledge that our performance in some areas is more important than in others. True balance demands that we determine what accomplishments give us honest satisfaction as well as what failures cause us intolerable grief.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)