1.3 Desktop Systems

Personal computers – computer system dedicated to a single user.

I/ O devices – keyboards, mice, display screens, small printers.

User convenience and responsiveness.

Can adopt technology developed for larger operating system’ often  individuals have sole use of computer and do not need advanced CPU utilization of protection features. May run several different types of operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, Linux) Parallel Systems. Multiprocessor systems with more than on CPU in close communication.

Tightly coupled system – processors share memory and a clock;

communication usually takes place through the shared memory.

Advantages of parallel system:

Increased throughput

Economical

Increased reliability

graceful degradation

fail- soft systems

Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)

Each processor runs and identical copy of the operating system.

Many processes can run at once without performance deterioration.

Most modern operating systems support SMP Asymmetric multiprocessing

 Each processor is assigned a specific task; master processor schedules and allocated work to slave processors.More common in extremely large systems

Symmetric Multiprocessing Architecture