SMP - Symmetric MultiProcessing

SMP involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture. In the case of multi-core processors, the SMP architecture applies to the cores, treating them as separate processors. The bottleneck in SMP scalability is the bandwidth of the bus connecting the various processors, the memory, and the disk arrays.
Symmetric MultiProcessing systems allow any processor to work on any task no matter where the data for that task are located in memory, provided that each task in the system is not in execution on two or more processors at the same time; with proper operating system support, SMP systems can easily move tasks between processors to balance the workload efficiently.
Both UNIX and Windows NT support SMP.