A JAVA Support for Distributed Shared Memory on COW
F.Baiardi Fbaiardi, P.Mori Pmori, Laura Ricci, Networks Pdcn, Febbruary, Innsbruck, Austria · International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing · 2002
This paper presents Hive, a Java library defining a distributed shared memory abstraction on a cluster of workstations. Hive defines the shared memory as a set of variable size areas and allows the user to choose between two alternative memory consistency models, sequential and release consistency. Hive differs from other libraries because of the strategies to implement the consistency models and to synchronize concurrent processes. Synchronization is implemented through tokens, i.e. privileges. Tokens circulate along a virtual ring that crosses the workstations. Two versions of Hive have been implemented, that differ because of the number of tokens. Preliminary performance figures are discussed; the use of Java threads in structuring the support is discussed as well.