ITPEC FE Morning October 2023 Question 13

SIMD — Single Instruction stream, Multiple Data streams: one instruction is applied to many data items at once.

Flynn's classification names an architecture by how many instruction streams and data streams it handles. SIMD is used in vector processors, GPUs and the vector extensions of ordinary CPUs, where one instruction adds, say, eight pairs of numbers in a single step.

Answer (c)

Why not others:

• •(a) MIMD — multiple instruction streams on multiple data: several processors or cores each running their own program, as in multiprocessors
• •(b) MISD — multiple instruction streams on a single data stream, a category with almost no practical machines
• •(d) SISD — a single instruction stream on a single data stream: the conventional sequential processor

Key rule: Read Flynn's acronyms literally: the first pair of letters counts instruction streams, the second pair counts data streams.

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