Operating Systems: Concurrent and Distributed Software Design

1.3. Architectures for software systems

It is desirable that cheap processing power, large and fast memory and high-bandwidth communications media should be exploited. Conventional architectures and interconnection topologies may be used as a basis for concurrent software. Alternatively, special architectures may be appropriate for certain application areas. Some are well understood and available commercially, while others are novel and still the subject of research and evaluation. This section reviews the options available. Where appropriate, any special language system associated with the architecture is described.

A broad classification that is helpful when considering concurrent systems was given by Flynn (Bayer et al., 1978). It is based ...