Multiprocessor systems are also known as parallel systems or tightly coupled systems. These systems have two or more processors in close communication and they share computer resources such as bus, clock, memory and peripheral devices.
The whole task of multiprocessing is managed by the operating system, which allocates different tasks to be performed by the various processors in thesystem. Applications designed for the use in multiprocessing are said to be threaded, which means that they are broken into smaller routines that can be run independently. This allows the operating system to let these threads run on more than one processor simultaneously, which is multiprocessing that results in improved performance. Generally, the parallel processing is used in the fields like artificial intelligence and expert system, image processing, weather forecasting etc.
Advantages:
Increased throughput: Increase in number of processors requires less time for more work. Number of processes completing their task for a particular duration is more.
Economy of scale: Cost is less than multiple single processor systems. If several programs operate on the same set of data, then it is cheaper to store those data on one disk and to have all the processors share them.
Increase reliability: Functions can be distributed properly among several processors and then the failure of one processor will not halt the system.
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