VLSI assist for a multiprocessor

Multiprocessors have long been of interest to computer community. They provide the potential for accelerating applications through parallelism and increased throughput for large multi-user system. Three factors have limited the commercial success of multiprocessor systems; entry cost, range of performance, and ease of application. Advances in very large scale integration (VLSI) and in computer aided design (CAD) have removed these limitations, making possible a new class of multiprocessor systems based on VLSI components. A set of requirements for building an efficient shared multiprocessor system are discussed, including: low-level mutual exclusion, interrupt distribution, inter-processor signaling, process dispatching, caching, and system configuration. A system that meets these requirements is described and evaluated.