NON-UNIFORM MEMORY ACCESS

(NUMA)
Introduction
Commercially, two types of multi-processors support systems were
available known as SMPs and Clusters.
But in the last few years a new type of multi-processors support
system is available known as NUMA.
Non-uniform memory access
(NUMA)
Definition:
 All processors have access to all parts of main memory using
loads and stores. The memory access time of a processor differs
depending on which region of main memory is accessed.
 Each processor has its own local memory, the memory of other
processor is accessible but the latency to access them is not the
same which this event called " remote memory access"
 Data Access
When a processor looks for data at a certain memory address, it
first looks in the L1 cache on the microprocessor itself, then on a
somewhat larger L1 and L2 cache chip nearby, and then on a third
level of cache that the NUMA configuration provides before seeking
the data in the "remote memory" located near the other
microprocessors. Each of these NODES in the interconnection
network. NUMA maintains a hierarchical view of the data on all the
nodes.