Pros/Cons

• Shared Memory Advantages

  • Easy to program - uniprocessor programming techniques most easily adapted to shared memory architectures
  • No need to physically move data between PEs, communication can be very efficient

• Shared Memory Disadvantages

  • Not scalability due to contention to shared memory

• Distributed Memory Advantages

  • Highly Scalable

• Distributed Memory Disadvantages

  • Programming model signficantly different from uniprocessor model
  • Must be concerned about load balancing, communication deadlock

• Distributed Memory architectures also called Message Passing architectures

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