Distributed processing with iAPX 186 microprocessor systems
Tony Zingale · 1982
In most early computer systems, large central computers, minicomputers, or microcomputers were used to perform all the necessary data processing activities in the system. The overall performance of the entire system was limited by the ability of the central CPU to bring in data, process it, and output it in some usable format. This often resulted in large data input/output bottlenecks in I/O-intensive applications where the CPU time required to service I/O functions left little time for data processing. The obvious result is a slow, nonoptimum data processing system. Now many applications are moving in the direction of simpler and easier-to-use distributed systems, where a central CPU delegates some of the processing tasks to distributed processing subsystems. Not only are costs lower with the distributed system approach, but the time needed to implement such systems is substantially less.