Flynn's Taxonomy

Flynn's Taxonomy is a classification of computer architectures, based on whether the processor handles multiple instructions at once, and whether data can be read frm multiple streams simultaneously. Since there are two parameters with two options each, the taxonomy becomes:

SISD - Single Instruction, Single Data
SIMD - Single Instruction, Multiple Data
MIMD - Multiple Instruction, Multiple Data
MISD - Multiple Instruction, Single Data

BUT, none of these are particularly interesting in 2013. The current pattern to use might be considered:

SPMD - Single Program, Multiple Data

In other words, to do parallel processing, one launches multiple processes and splits up the tasks between them with a messaging framework. OpenMPI is a popular one of these.