CSC/ECE 506 Spring 2012/11a hn
In a Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) several processors share the same address space. It is a logical abstraction of a single address space which can be accessed by all processors. Instead of implementing shared memory model with a bus support the DSM uses a more scalable and less expensive model by supporting the abstraction of shared memory by using message passing. The main memory of a cluster of processors is made to look like a single memory with a single address space. Hence a processor can access a address space held by other processors main memory. The messages/mechanism used to get data to a processor from memory is hidden from the programmer and dealt internally.