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Techniques for reducing consistency-related communication in distributed shared memory systems
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| Venue: | ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. Toappear |
| Citations: | 106 - 13 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Carter_techniquesfor,
author = {John B. Carter and John K. Bennett and Willy Zwaenepoel},
title = {Techniques for reducing consistency-related communication in distributed shared memory systems},
journal = {ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. Toappear},
year = {}
}
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Abstract
Distributed shared memory (DSM) is a software abstraction of shared memory on a distributed memory machine. One of the key problems in building an e cient DSM system is to reduce the amount ofcommunication needed to keep the distributed memories consistent. In this paper we presentfour techniques for doing so: (1) software release consistency � (2) multiple consistency protocols � (3) write-shared protocols � and (4) an update-with-timeout mechanism. These techniques have been implemented in the Munin DSM system. We compare the performance of seven application programs on Munin, rst to their performance when implemented using message passing and then to their performance when running on a conventional DSM system that does not embody the above techniques. On a 16-processor cluster of workstations, Munin's performance is within 5 % of message passing for four out of the seven applications. For the other three, performance is within 29 % to 33%. Detailed analysis of two of these three applications indicates that the addition of a function shipping capability would bring their performance within 7 % of the message passing performance. Compared to a conventional DSM system, Munin achieves performance improvements ranging from a few to several hundred percent, depending on the application.
Keyphrases
distributed shared memory system consistency-related communication conventional dsm system shared memory multiple consistency protocol key problem distributed memory software abstraction 16-processor cluster cient dsm system application program update-with-timeout mechanism munin dsm system distributed memory machine write-shared protocol amount ofcommunication function shipping capability performance improvement message passing software release consistency
