NUMA, non-uniform memory access designates a symetric multi-processing system where processors are grouped into nodes, with each group sharing some level of memory, so that memory access on same node is faster than memory access to another node. To me, NUMA is a concept which is appropriate for clusters.
Then, what is a NUMA processor? is it a processor where cores are grouped, with each group of cores sharing some level of cache?
Then, what is a NUMA processor?
It's a processor capable of acting as a NUMA node
is it a processor where cores are grouped, with each group of cores sharing some level of cache?
No, not really, it's literally just any kind of CPU capable of acting as a NUMA node.
To me, NUMA is a concept which is appropriate for clusters.
Again, sorry but nope, NUMA is almost always a single-server-architecture. Basically just about any 2+ socket server you can buy now fits within the NUMA scheme. It's why we server geeks spend so much time ensuring we lay out our memory and IO devices in a balanced way and make sure our OS's are configured to know they're working in a NUMA system too. Anything else means your CPUs spend way too much of their time just acting as a memory or IO controller.
Of interest have a look at HP's 'The Machine' and IBM's 'Watson' architectures - they're still very much in their infancy but I think are the way we'll be doing things in 7-10 years.
