Communications of the ACM

ture of shared memory in a multiprocessor computer system is examined with particular attention to noninterleaved memory. Alternative memory organizations are compared and it is shown that a home memory organization, in which each processor is associated with one or more memories in which its address space is concentrated, is quite effective in reducing memory interference. Home memory organization is shown to be particularly suited to certain specialized computational problems as well as to possess advantages in terms of interference and reliability for general purpose computation. Results for interleaved memory are drawn from previous work and are used for comparison. Trace-driven simulations are used to verify the conclusions of the analysis.