Single instruction, multiple data (
SIMD), is a class of parallel computers in
Flynn's taxonomy. It describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data points simultaneously. Thus, such machines exploit
data level parallelism, but not
concurrency: there are simultaneous (parallel) computations, but only a single process (instruction) at a given moment. SIMD is particularly applicable to common tasks like adjusting the contrast in a
digital image or adjusting the volume of
digital audio. Most modern
CPU designs include SIMD instructions in order to improve the performance of
multimedia use.