Thread-level Parallelism

Question 1

What is thread-level parallelism?

Answer 1

A programming model that leverages multi-core processors

Question 2

What are the three types of parallel architecture?

Answer 2

1. Single Instruction, Single Data
2. Single Instruction, Multiple Data
3. Multiple Instruction Multiple Data

Question 3

How does Single Instruction Multiple data work?

Answer 3

The same instrcution is executed by multiple processors using different data streams. Each processor has its own data memory.

Question 4

How does Multiple Instruction Multiple Data work?

Answer 4

Each processor fetches its own instruction and operates on its own data. The processors are often off-the-shelf microprocessors.

Question 5

What is a thread?

Answer 5

Threads are semi-independent streams of execution spawned by a process. They share memory with each other.

Question 6

What is a shared memory system?

Answer 6

Threads can see the data of the parent process while being assigned to different physical cores on the processor

Question 7

What is distributed memory parallelism?

Answer 7

The data is distributed among the processes, creating smaller sub-problems. Processes can only see their own data, and communication between them is done via messages.

Question 8

What are the two parallel libraries used?

Answer 8

OpenMP and MPI