Essentials of Computer Organization and Architecture, 5th Edition

9.3   FLYNN’S TAXONOMY

Over the years, several attempts have been made to find a satisfactory way to categorize computer architectures. Although none of them are perfect, today’s most widely accepted taxonomy is the one proposed by Michael Flynn in 1972. Flynn’s taxonomy considers two factors: the number of instructions and the number of data streams that flow into the processor. A machine can have either one or multiple streams of data, and can have either one or multiple processors working on this data. This gives us four possible combinations: SISD (single instruction stream, single data stream), SIMD (single instruction stream, multiple data streams), MISD (multiple instruction streams, single data stream), and MIMD (multiple instruction ...