L 1 Cache L 2 Cache Shared Memory Bus P 6 Multiprocessor scalability in Microsoft Windows NT / 2000

This paper provides an overview of the multiprocessing support in the Microsoft Windows NT/2000 operating system, with an emphasis on scalability and other capacity planning issues. It also discusses specific features of the Intel P6 architecture that provide the hardware basis for large scale multiprocessing systems. As a shared memory multiprocessing implementation, Windows NT/2000 is predictably vulnerable to saturation on the shared memory bus. Processor hardware measurements that can illuminate memory bus contention when it appears are also described and discussed.