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47
Microkernels meet recursive virtual machines
, 1996
"... This paper describes a novel approach to providing modular and extensible operating system functionality and encapsulated environments based on a synthesis of microkernel and virtual machine concepts. We have developed a software-based virtualizable architecture called Fluke that allows recursive vi ..."
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Cited by 132 (27 self)
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This paper describes a novel approach to providing modular and extensible operating system functionality and encapsulated environments based on a synthesis of microkernel and virtual machine concepts. We have developed a software-based virtualizable architecture called Fluke that allows recursive virtual machines (virtual machines running on other virtual machines) to be implemented efficiently by a microkernel running on generic hardware. A complete virtual machine interface is provided at each level; efficiency derives from needing to implement only new functionality at each level. This infrastructure allows common OS functionality, such as process management, demand paging, fault tolerance, and debugging support, to be provided by cleanly modularized, independent, stackable virtual machine monitors, implemented as user processes. It can also provide uncommon or unique OS features, including the above features specialized for particular applications ’ needs, virtual machines transparently distributed cross-node, or security monitors that allow arbitrary untrusted binaries to be executed safely. Our prototype implementation of this model indicates that it is practical to modularize operating systems this way. Some types of virtual machine layers impose almost no overhead at all, while others impose some overhead (typically 0–35%), but only on certain classes of applications.
Project Kittyhawk: building a global-scale computer: Blue Gene/P as a generic computing platform
- SIGOPS Operating Systems Review
"... This paper describes Project Kittyhawk, an undertaking at IBM Research to explore the construction of a nextgeneration platform capable of hosting many simultaneous web-scale workloads. We hypothesize that for a large class of web-scale workloads the Blue Gene/P platform is an order of magnitude mor ..."
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Cited by 20 (1 self)
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This paper describes Project Kittyhawk, an undertaking at IBM Research to explore the construction of a nextgeneration platform capable of hosting many simultaneous web-scale workloads. We hypothesize that for a large class of web-scale workloads the Blue Gene/P platform is an order of magnitude more efficient to purchase and operate than the commodity clusters in use today. Driven by scientific computing demands the Blue Gene designers pursued an aggressive system-on-a-chip methodology that led to a scalable platform composed of air-cooled racks. Each rack contains more than a thousand independent computers with highspeed interconnects inside and between racks. We postulate that the same demands of efficiency and density apply to web-scale platforms. This project aims to develop the system software to enable Blue Gene/P as a generic platform capable of being used by heterogeneous workloads. We describe our firmware and operating system work to provide Blue Gene/P with generic system software, one of the results of which is the ability to run thousands of heterogeneous Linux instances connected by TCP/IP networks over the high-speed internal interconnects.
The Network Hardware Is the Operating System
, 1997
"... To build a distributed operating system the microkernel approach is the most popular. To build an adaptable operating system a minimal microkernel is preferred. But for an adaptable and flexible distributed operating system the previous approaches are not enough because they create an artificial bar ..."
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Cited by 11 (7 self)
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To build a distributed operating system the microkernel approach is the most popular. To build an adaptable operating system a minimal microkernel is preferred. But for an adaptable and flexible distributed operating system the previous approaches are not enough because they create an artificial barrier to OS distribution and harm system transparency and adaptability. This paper express how adaptable distributed systems could be built and describes an example implementation named Off where the microkernel itself and its abstractions are both distributed and adaptable. It is shown why the system interface should be close to the hardware but not restricted to a local node. The whole network is considered to be the exported and multiplexed hardware in contrast to what is done by today microkernel in "distributed" OSes eliminating the artificial view of nodes as isolated entities. 1. Introduction The well known definition for operating system is "the software that securely abstracts and m...
A Detailed Description of Off++, a Distributed Adaptable μkernel
, 1997
"... The Off++ distributed adaptable µkernel is a minimal µkernel whose only task is to safely multiplex and export the distributed hardware present in the network. It is designed to be used as a basis for distributed user-level OS services. This technical report describes the design and implementation o ..."
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Cited by 10 (7 self)
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The Off++ distributed adaptable µkernel is a minimal µkernel whose only task is to safely multiplex and export the distributed hardware present in the network. It is designed to be used as a basis for distributed user-level OS services. This technical report describes the design and implementation of Off++, the object-oriented redesign of the Off µkernel [1, 3]. Off++ extends the functionalities provided by Off in order to provide basic support for the 2K operating system [5] we are currently building. This document is meant to be the starting point for the system literate implementation.
Memory sharing for interactive ray tracing on clusters
- Parallel Computing
, 2005
"... We present recent results in the application of distributed shared memory to image parallel ray tracing on clusters. Image parallel rendering is traditionally limited to scenes that are small enough to be replicated in the memory of each node, because any processor may require access to any piece of ..."
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Cited by 9 (1 self)
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We present recent results in the application of distributed shared memory to image parallel ray tracing on clusters. Image parallel rendering is traditionally limited to scenes that are small enough to be replicated in the memory of each node, because any processor may require access to any piece of the scene. We solve this problem by making all of a cluster’s memory available through software distributed shared memory layers. With gigabit ethernet connections, this mechanism is sufficiently fast for interactive rendering of multi-gigabyte datasets. Object- and page-based distributed shared memories are compared, and optimizations for efficient memory use are discussed. Key words: scientific visualization, out-of-core rendering, distributed shared memory, ray tracing, cache miss reduction 1
Distributed shared memory for roaming large volumes
- IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS
, 2006
"... We present a cluster-based volume rendering system for roaming very large volumes. This system allows to move a gigabyte-sized probe inside a total volume of several tens or hundreds of gigabytes in real-time. While the size of the probe is limited by the total amount of texture memory on the cluste ..."
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Cited by 8 (0 self)
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We present a cluster-based volume rendering system for roaming very large volumes. This system allows to move a gigabyte-sized probe inside a total volume of several tens or hundreds of gigabytes in real-time. While the size of the probe is limited by the total amount of texture memory on the cluster, the size of the total data set has no theoretical limit. The cluster is used as a distributed graphics processing unit that both aggregates graphics power and graphics memory. A hardware-accelerated volume renderer runs in parallel on the cluster nodes and the final image compositing is implemented using a pipelined sort-last rendering algorithm. Meanwhile, volume bricking and volume paging allow efficient data caching. On each rendering node, a distributed hierarchical cache system implements a global software-based distributed shared memory on the cluster. In case of a cache miss, this system first checks page residency on the other cluster nodes instead of directly accessing local disks. Using two Gigabit Ethernet network interfaces per node, we accelerate data fetching by a factor of 4 compared to directly accessing local disks. The system also implements asynchronous disk access and texture loading, which makes it possible to overlap data loading, volume slicing and rendering for optimal volume roaming.
Distributed Shared Memory: Bridging the Granularity Gap
, 1999
"... In this position paper we explore a very recent technique, called MultiView, its applications, and its implications on the design and usage of distributed shared memory systems #dsms# #6#. MultiView can be used to bridge the gap between the large, #xed-size memory pages handled by the hardware and o ..."
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Cited by 7 (1 self)
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In this position paper we explore a very recent technique, called MultiView, its applications, and its implications on the design and usage of distributed shared memory systems #dsms# #6#. MultiView can be used to bridge the gap between the large, #xed-size memory pages handled by the hardware and operating system, and the relatively-small, varying-size minipages that are used by applications. Using MultiView, the distributed shared memory system can adapt to the native granularity of the application in a natural way. While originally proposed for supporting #negranularity sharing, MultiView can also be used by all the accompanying dsm services, including sharing across machines, protection and consistency manipulation, detecting racing accesses, collecting garbage, tracing true sharing by application threads, etc. Thus, MultiView simpli#es the design and usage of dsm systems in a signi#cant step towards making them a popular technology. 1 Introduction Consider the services that a...
SVMview: a Performance Tuning Tool for DSM-based Parallel Computers
- IRISA, CAMPUS DE BEAULIEU, 35042 RENNES CEDEX
, 1996
"... This paper describes a performance tuning tool, named SVMview, for DSM-based parallel computers. SVMview is a tool for doing a post-mortem analysis of page movements generated during the execution of Fortran-S programs. This tool is able to analyze some particular phenomena such as false-sharing whi ..."
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Cited by 7 (0 self)
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This paper describes a performance tuning tool, named SVMview, for DSM-based parallel computers. SVMview is a tool for doing a post-mortem analysis of page movements generated during the execution of Fortran-S programs. This tool is able to analyze some particular phenomena such as false-sharing which occurs when several processors write to the same page simultaneously. Such behavior entails badly the performance of DSM systems, and thus are particularly important to be detected.
Multicomputer object stores: the Multicomputer Texas experiment
- In R. CONNOR AND S. NETTLES Eds., Seventh International Workshop on Persistent Object Systems (Cape May
, 1996
"... The paper is about design of object stores for distributed memory computers. Problems of distribution within such stores are described through the design of Multicomputer Texas, a system derived from the Texas store [SKW92] and implemented on a scalable multicomputer (a Fujitsu AP1000). Problems dis ..."
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Cited by 6 (2 self)
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The paper is about design of object stores for distributed memory computers. Problems of distribution within such stores are described through the design of Multicomputer Texas, a system derived from the Texas store [SKW92] and implemented on a scalable multicomputer (a Fujitsu AP1000). Problems discussed include creating a single image of an object space across multicomputer architectures, tradeoffs between page-based and object-based granularity, the distribution of store level services and the management of concurrency and persistance within those distributed services. Problems of building layered software on multicomputers pervade these issues. Preliminary scalability performance figures for Multicomputer Texas are also presented.
A Cost-Comparison Approach for Adaptive Distributed Shared Memory
- In Proceedings of the 1996 ACM International Conference on Supercomputing. ACM
, 1996
"... The focus of this paper is on software implementations of Distributed Shared Memory (DSM). In recent years, many protocols for implementing DSM have beenproposed. Performance of these protocols depends on the memory access behavior of the applications. Some researchers have proposed DSMs that provid ..."
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Cited by 6 (4 self)
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The focus of this paper is on software implementations of Distributed Shared Memory (DSM). In recent years, many protocols for implementing DSM have beenproposed. Performance of these protocols depends on the memory access behavior of the applications. Some researchers have proposed DSMs that provide a family of consistency protocols or application-specific protocols, and the programmer is allowed to choose any one of them for each shared memory object (or page) or each stage of an application. While such implementations have a potential for achieving optimal performance, they impose undue burden on the programmer. Therefore, some adaptive schemes that automatically choose the appropriate protocol have beenproposed. This paper presents asimple approach for implementing adaptive DSMs. The approach is illustrated with the example of an adaptive DSMbasedon the invalidate andcompetitive update protocols. The objective of the adaptive scheme is to minimize a pre-defined "cost" function. Th...
