ECE506 CSC/ECE 506 Spring 2012/11a az

11a.  Performance of DSM systems.  Distributed shared memory systems combine the programming models of shared memory systems, and the scalability of distributed systems.  However, since DSM systems need extra coordination between software layer and underlying hardware, achieving good performance could be a big challenge. The factors that harm the performance could be the overhead to maintain cache coherence, memory consistency, and the latency of interconnections. Please further explore the factors that can affect the performance of DSM systems, and the improvements that have been made on the existing systems.

Introduction

Performance Concerns

Maintaining cache coherence

DSM systems must maintain cache coherence just as it required by bus-based multiprocessor systems. Cache coherence is a problem that arises when it is undefined how a value that is changed in a specific processor's cache is propagated to the other caches [1, p. 183]. If multiple processors access and modify a shared location in memory and produce outputs based on that shared variable, it is possible to calculate incorrect values if cache coherence is not maintained.

Definitions

DSM

Distributed shared memory, a parallel computer architecture which consists of a set of nodes that contain their own local memory, but all nodes are connected together, making their memories one shared addressable space.

node

A compute unit that makes up one components of a DSM system. A node consists of one or more sets of processors, cache, and memory. A node is connected to the larger DSM system through an interconnect.

References

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