Uniform memory access

Uniform Memory Access (UMA) is a shared memory architecture used in parallel computers.

All the processors in the UMA model share the physical memory uniformly. In a UMA architecture, access time to a memory location is independent of which processor makes the request or which memory chip contains the transferred data.

Uniform Memory Access computer architectures are often contrasted with Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) architectures.

In the UMA architecture, each processor may use a private cache. Peripherals are also shared in some fashion, The UMA model is suitable for general purpose and time sharing applications by multiple users. It can be used to speed up the execution of a single large program in time critical applications.

Types of UMA architectures

1. UMA using bus-based Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) architectures
2. UMA using crossbar switches
3. UMA using Multistage interconnection networks

this is also facted to make absoloutly no sense to someone like me who knows little about this stuff and just wants to know in simple terms what uniform memory does

See also

• NUMA