Grasp the basic concepts of a multiprocessor
(MP) system.
Gain familiarity with MP data structures.
Understand locking strategies (spinlocks and semaphores)
available in kernel for MP.
Introduce the kernel interface to control MP events.
Learn about process scheduling and load balancing
in an MP environment.
NOTE: A full study of MP internals is beyond the scope of
this text, which does not deal with related issues of interest such
as interrupt and powerfail handling, and tuning of other subsystems
for a multi-processing environment. Instead, this study introduces
multiprocessor data structures and the locking strategies that guarantee
consistency across parallel processors.
Throughout this text, multiprocessor systems are referrred
to as MP systems. Individual processors will be referred to as both
"processors" and SPUs (system processing unit).
