Performance Measurements On A Commercial Multiprocessor Running Parallel Code

The multiprocessor Sequent Symmetry was first delivered to customers with write-through caches. Later on each machine was upgraded with copy-back caches. Because all the other architectural parameters were unchanged (main memory, bus, cache organization and size, and so on), this made it possible to measure the performance of a multiprocessor with no caches, write-through caches, and copy-back caches. We also study the impact that the language (FORTRAN and C) has on the performance of the machine.