1. The basic components of a parallel computer are processors, memory, and an interconnect network that connects the processors and memory.
2. Key processor terms include RISC, pipelining, and superscalar, which refer to instruction processing techniques. The network interconnect is characterized by latency, bandwidth, and topology.
3. Memory terms include cache, which sits between the CPU and main memory, as well as instruction cache, data cache, secondary cache, and translation lookaside buffer. Caches provide faster access to frequently used data and instructions.