Short for
massively parallel processing, a type of computing that uses many separate
CPUs running in parallel to
execute a single
program. MPP is similar to
symmetric processing (SMP), with the main difference being that in SMP systems all the CPUs share the same
memory, whereas in MPP systems, each CPU has its own memory. MPP systems are therefore more difficult to program because the application must be divided in such a way that all the executing segments can communicate with each other. On the other hand, MPP don't suffer from the bottleneck problems inherent in SMP systems when all the CPUs attempt to access the same memory at once.
