Central Luzon State University

College of Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Information Technology

COMSCI 1210
COMPUTER ORGANIZATION
Case Study 1
Computer Architecture | Flynn’s taxonomy

Agus, Alfie Bernard M.

Dela Cruz, Ville Diane V.
Dugay, Dorothy Fae C.
Lumba, Marc Joseph S.
Manlusoc, Jasper A.
Navarro, Julius Jay D.
Pineda, Jose Daniel M.
Regalado, Rich John B.
Tejero, Daryl Angelo V.
Velasco, Philip Nathaniel G.

2nd Semester, SY: 2019-2020

Overview of the Topic
 Michael J. Flynn is currently the Chairman of the Board and Senior
Advisor at Maxeler Technologies (London and Palo Alto). Maxeler is the
leading provider of dataflow computers which have proven especially
valuable in high performance computing markets such as finance and
geophysics.

He received his BS from Manhattan College, MS from Syracuse

University, PhD from Purdue University. He began his engineering career at
IBM as a designer of mainframe computers. He became Professor of
Electrical Engineering at Stanford in 1975 where he set up the Stanford
Architecture and Arithmetic group. He retired from Stanford in 1999 and
continues there as Emeritus Professor. Some of his best-known work includes
the development of the now familiar stream outline of computer organization
(SIMD, etc.). For many years this has served as the fundamental formal
taxonomy of parallel computers.

Proposed by Michael J. Flynn in 1966, Flynn’s taxonomy is a specific

classification of parallel computer architectures that are based on the
number of concurrent instruction and data streams available in the
architecture. According to Ngoko(2018) and Trystram(2018), Flynn’s
taxonomy serves as a clear construct to think parallelism in which it
proposes two concepts for building parallel organizations: the stream of
instructions where the sequence of instructions read from the memory
constitutes to and the stream of data where the operations performed on the
data are located. Michael J. Flynn proposed to define all possible
combinations of instructions/data, leading to four classes of organization: the
SISD which stands for Single Instruction Single Data, the SIMD which stands
for Single Instruction Multiple Data, the MISD which stands for Multiple
Instruction Single Data, and the MIMD which stands for Multiple Instruction
Multiple Data. The function and difference of each classification will later on
be discussed in case study.

According to Trystram(2018), Flynn’s taxonomy conceptualized the

parallelism at the level of machine instructions. The conceptualizations
eventually lead to other models where the control of parallelism is put at a
higher level or layer. This lead to the SPMD(Single Program Multiple Data)
and MPMD(Multiple Program Multiple Data) models to be introduced.

Discussion Questions
1. What are the Flynn’s Taxonomy Classification and discuss the difference
of each classification to each other.

One of the classifications of Flynn’s Taxonomy is the Single Instruction

Single Data(SISD) systems which is a uniprocessor machine which is capable
of executing a single instruction, operating on a single data stream. Machine
instructions are processed in a sequential manner and computer adopting
the SISD model are popularly called sequential computers. The speed of the
processing element in the SISD model is dependent by the rate at which the
computer can transfer information internally.

The second classification of Flynn’s Taxonomy is the Single Instruction

Multiple Data(SIMD) systems which is a multiprocessor machine capable of
executing the same instruction on all the CPUs but operating on different
data streams. Machines based on an SIMD model are well suited to scientific
computing since they involve lots of vector and matrix operations.

The third classification of Flynn’s Taxonomy is the Multiple Instruction

Single Data(MISD) systems which is a multiprocessor machine capable of
executing different instructions on different PEs but all of them operate on
the same data set. Machines built using the MISD model are not useful in
most applications, that’s why none of them are available commercially.

Finally, the fourth classification of Flynn’s Taxonomy is the Multiple

Instruction Multiple Data systems which is a multiprocessor machine which is
capable of executing multiple instructions on multiple data sets. Each PE in
the MIMD model has separate instruction and data streams; therefore
machines built using this model are capable to any kind of application. Unlike
SIMD and MISD machines, PEs in MIMD machine work asynchronously. MIMD
machines are categorized into shared-memory MIMD and distributed-
memory MIMD based on the way PEs are coupled to the main memory.

Discussion Questions
2. Give example of each Flynn’s Taxonomy Classification and explain how it
become an example of the each Flynn’s Classification.

An example of the SISD architecture are the traditional uniprocessor

machines(currently manufactured PCs that have multiple processors) or old
mainframes. Uniprocessor machines are an example of SISD architecture
because it is a single uni-core processor and executes a single instruction
stream.

An example of SIMD architecture is an array processor or GPU. A GPU

is an example of SIMD architecture because it can perform the same
operation on multiple data points simultaneously.

An example of MISD architecture is a Space Shuttle flight control

computer. Space Shuttle flight control computers can perform different
operations on the same data which concurrently are the actions of the MISD
architecture.

An example of MIMD system is the Intel Xeon Phi. These processors

have multiple processing cores(up to 61 as of 2015) that can execute
different instructions on different data. Intel Xeon Phi is an example of MIMD
system because it has multiple number of processors that function
asynchronously and independently, each processor can perform different
instructions on different pieces of data.

Discussion Questions

3. Illustrate in your case study paper the visual representation of each

Flynn’s Taxonomy Classification.
 Source: https://openi.nlm.nih.gov/detailedresult?img=PMC2703572-_d-65-00659-
fig2&req=4

References:
Computer Architecture | Flynn's taxonomy. (n.d.). Retrieved February 2020, from
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-architecture-flynns-taxonomy/amp/
Examples of SISD architecture are the traditional uniprocessor machine. (n.d.). Retrieved February 2020,
from CourseHero: https://www.coursehero.com/file/p48rh8d/Examples-of-SISD-architecture-
are-the-traditional-uniprocessor-machines/

IEEE Computer Society Michael J Flynn Comments. (n.d.). Retrieved February 2020, from
https://www.computer.org/profiles/michael-flynn

Michael J. Flynn: American academic - Biography and Life. (n.d.). Retrieved February 2020, from
PeoplePill: https://peoplepill.com/people/michael-j-flynn