A transparent software distributed shared memory

Abstract

Software Distributed Shared Memory (SDSM) systems use clusters to provide yet another level of scalability to multi-threaded shared-memory applications. However, linking with SDSM libraries usually requires adaptation of the program's system calls to the SDSM specific APIs, alignment of program variables to page boundary, in-depth verification of the program against the SDSM memory model, transforming global variables to be dynamically allocated, and more of the like. In this work we present the transparent SDSM - an SDSM that can efficiently execute any multi-threaded program (given in binary compiled form). The memory model of the transparent SDSM correctly supports any shared-memory application, whether programmed using relaxed or strict consistency in mind. By presenting a prototype and measurements, we show that the performance of the transparent SDSM is not compromised, essentially matching that of a non-transparent high-performance SDSM. © Springer-Verlag 2003.