Computer Hardware Terms, Glossary and Dictionary

Massively parallel processing (MPP) is a type of computing that uses many separate CPUs running in parallel to execute a single program. Systems with thousands of such processors are known as massively parallel. There are many different kinds of parallel computers (or "parallel processors") depending on how the processors are interconnected and how the processors communicate with memories, or if all processors execute the same instructions at the same time (single instruction/multiple data -- SIMD) or each processor executes different instructions (multiple instruction/multiple data -- MIMD). Parallel processor machines are also divided into symmetric and asymmetric multiprocessors, depending on whether all the processors are capable of running all the operating system code and, say, accessing I/O devices or if some processors are more or less privileged.

Related Terms

MPP: Massively parallel processing