
12.2 Applications and System Software 955
coherent access to other PAM chips. The techniques are now very well understood,
as is the minimal amount of hardware support required to provide this functionality.
If the processor component of the PAM is indeed small, then even if only one pro-
cess in the system is ever used, the additional cost of the other processors sitting
near the memories is small. Since parallel software is becoming more and more
widespread, the extra processing power is there when applications demand it.
12.2 APPLICATIONS AND SYSTEM SOFTWARE
Clearly, the future of parallel computer architecture will increasingly be a stor ...