4.2.2 Supporting hardware neutrality

The different systems listed in section 4.2.1 can be categorized in many different ways. For example, one common distinction is between shared-memory parallel systems (SMP's, PVP's) and distributed memory parallel systems (for example x86 clusters and large MPP systems). This is one example of a difference between compute platforms that can impact an application. Another common distinction is between vector processing systems with highly specialized CPU's and memory subsystems and commodity microprocessor based systems. There are numerous other differences, especially in relation to how parallel execution is supported. To capture the essential differences between different platforms the WRAPPER uses a machine model.

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