This document provides a guide for developers writing applications and device drivers for OS/2 for Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) V2.11.
OS/2 for SMP V2.11 was developed to satisfy the need to run OS/2 on multiprocessor based CISC processors, namely the Intel x86 compatible family. The requirements for OS/2 for SMP V2.11 were that it run all existing applications, device drivers and subsystems, as well as take advantage of new multiprocessor (MP) exploitive applications and device drivers.
The emergence of low-cost MP hardware based on the 486 and Pentium processors makes OS/2 for SMP V2.11 an attractive desktop operating environment. Server and workstation environments using the x86 architecture are moving toward the more powerful emerging RISC based chip sets. These new RISC processors lack the full range of programming tools available for the x86 chip set. OS/2 for SMP V2.11 attempts to solve the problems of insufficient processor bandwidth by supporting multiple x86 processors in a single computer.
To provide increased performance, OS/2 for SMP V2.11 allows applications, file system, mass storage and network drivers to execute on any processor at any time. A number of databases and applications have been converted to run OS/2 for SMP V2.11. DB2/2 and CICS are two databases that IBM has converted to run under OS/2 for SMP V2.11. These application can benefit greatly from OS/2 for SMP V2.11 because they are CPU-intensive. Other applications which can also benefit from OS/2 for SMP V2.11 are:
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