SMP Concepts

Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) applies to a multiprocessor computer architecture where 2 or more identical processes can connect to a single shared main memory. SMP allows simultaneous execution of threads. This means that overall performance is improved and ultimately battery life is extended. This section introduces the main concepts applied to SMP including Threading Models, Interrupt Handling, Locking and Memory Barriers.

• SMP Overview
  This document introduces Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) on the Symbian platform.
• Threading Model
  Describes the impacts of thread execution in SMP environment.
• Interrupt Handling
  Describes how interrupts are handled in the SMP environment.
• Locking
  This document describes SMP locks and outlines the need of introducing locks in the code.
• Spin Locks
  Spin locks allow resource execution control through fast lock context switching.
• Data Integrity and Memory Barriers
  This topic explains how memory barriers are used to maintain data integrity in a multi-CPU system with shared memory and I/O.
• Atomic Operations
  Describes the new atomic operations added to euser.dll and the kernel.
• Building for an SMP Platform
  This document describes the issues raised when building code for an SMP platform.