Implementing Object-Based Distributed Shared Memory on Transputers
Heinz-Peter Heinzley, Henri E. Bal, Koen G. Langendoen · 2007
Object-based distributed shared memory systems allow processes on different machines to communicate through passive shared objects. This paper describes the implementation of such a system on a transputer grid. The system automatically takes care of placement and replication of objects. The main difficulty in implementing shared objects is updating replicated objects in a consistent way. We use totally-ordered group communication (broadcasting) for this purpose. We give four different algorithms for ordering broadcasts on a grid and study their performance. We also describe a portable runtime system for shared objects. Measurements for three parallel applications running on 128 T800 transputers show that good performance can be obtained.