article

Distributed Shared Memory: Concepts and Systems

Authors:

Milo Tomasevic,

Veljko MilutinovicAuthors Info & Claims

IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology: Systems & Technology, Volume 4, Issue 2

Pages 63 - 79

https://doi.org/10.1109/88.494605

Published: 01 June 1996 Publication History

Abstract

This article reviews the increasingly important area of distributed-shared memory. This relatively new concept combines the advantages of the shared- and distributed-memory approaches. A DSM system logically implements the shared-memory model on a physically distributed-memory system. System designers can implement the specific mechanism for achieving the shared-memory abstraction in hardware or software in a variety of ways. The DSM system hides the remote communication mechanism from the application writer, preserving the programming ease and portability typical of shared-memory systems. DSM systems allow relatively easy modification and efficient execution of existing shared-memory system applications, which preserves software investments while maximizing the resulting performance. In addition, the scalability and cost-effectiveness of underlying distributed-memory systems are also inherited. Consequently, DSM systems offer a viable choice for building efficient, large-scale multiprocessors.The DSM model's ability to provide a transparent interface and convenient programming environment for distributed and parallel applications have made it the focus of numerous research efforts in recent years. Current DSM system research focuses on the development of general approaches that minimize the average access time to shared data, while maintaining data consistency. Some solutions implement a specific software layer on top of existing message-passing systems. Others extend strategies applied in shared-memory multiprocessors with private caches to multilevel memory systems.After first covering general DSM concepts and approaches, this article surveys existing DSM systems, developed either as research prototypes or commercial products and standards.

References

[1]

M.J. Flynn, Computer Architecture: Pipelined and Parallel Processor Design, Jones and Bartlett, Boston, 1995.]]

Digital Library

[2]

V. Lo, "Operating Systems Enhancements for Distributed Shared Memory," Advances in Computers, Vol. 39, 1994, pp. 191-237.]]

[3]

J. Protic M. Tomasevic and V. Milutinovic, "A Survey of Distributed Shared Memory Systems," Proc. 28th Ann. Hawaii Int'l Conf. System Sciences, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1995, pp. 74-84.]]

Digital Library

[4]

M. Tomasevic and V. Milutinovic, "Hardware Approaches to Cache Coherence in Shared-Memory Multiprocessors, Part 1 (Basic Issues)," IEEE Micro, Vol. 14, No. 5, Oct. 1994, pp. 52-59.]]

Digital Library

[5]

M. Tomasevic and V. Milutinovic, "Hardware Approaches to Cache Coherence in Shared-Memory Multiprocessors, Part 2 (Advanced Issues)," IEEE Micro, Vol. 14, No. 6, Dec. 1994, pp. 61-66.]]

Digital Library

[6]

I. Tartalja and V. Milutinovic, "A Survey of Software Solutions for Maintenance of Cache Consistency in Shared Memory Multiprocessors," Proc. 28th Ann. Hawaii Int'l Conf. System Sciences, CS Press, 1995, pp. 272-282.]]

Digital Library

[7]

K. Li and P. Hudak, "Memory Coherence in Shared Virtual Memory Systems," ACM Trans. Computer Systems, Vol. 7, No. 4, Nov. 1989, pp. 321-359.]]

Digital Library

[8]

M. Stumm and S. Zhou, "Algorithms Implementing Distributed Shared Memory," Computer, Vol. 23, No. 5, May 1990, pp. 54-64.]]

Digital Library

[9]

D.L. Black A. Gupta and W. Weber, "Competitive Management of Distributed Shared Memory," Compcon '89, CS Press, 1989, pp. 184-190.]]

[10]

R.E. Kessler and M. Livny, "An Analysis of Distributed Shared Memory Algorithms," Proc. Ninth Int'l Conf. Distributed Computing Systems, CS Press, 1989, pp. 498-505.]]

[11]

R. Bisiani and A. Forin, "Multilanguage Parallel Programming of Heterogeneous Machines," IEEE Trans. Computers, Vol. 37, No. 8, Aug. 1988 pp. 930-945.]]

Digital Library

[12]

J. Protic M. Tomasevic and V. Milutinovic, "A Survey of Distributed Shared Memory: Concepts and Systems," Tech. Report No. ETF-TR-95-157, Dept. of Computer Engineering, Univ. of Belgrade, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1995.]]

[13]

J. Protic M. Tomasevic and V. Milutinovic, "Tutorial on Distributed Shared Memory: Concepts and Systems," CS Press, to be published in 1996.]]

Digital Library

[14]

K. Gharachorloo, et al., "Memory Consistency and Event Ordering in Scalable Shared-Memory Multiprocessors," Proc. 17th Ann. Int'l Symp. Computer Architecture, CS Press, 1990, pp. 15-26.]]

Digital Library

[15]

P. Keleher A.L. Cox and W. Zwaenepoel, "Lazy Release Consistency for Software Distributed Shared Memory," Proc. 19th Ann. Int'l Symp. Computer Architecture, CS Press, 1992, pp. 13-21.]]

Digital Library

[16]

K. Li, "IVY: A Shared Virtual Memory System for Parallel Computing," Proc. Int'l Conf. Parallel Processing, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1988, pp. 94-101.]]

[17]

S. Zhou M. Stumm and T. McInerney, "Extending Distributed Shared Memory to Heterogeneous Environments," Proc. 10th Int'l Conf. Distributed Computing Systems, CS Press, 1990, pp. 30-37.]]

[18]

J.B. Carter J.K. Bennet and W. Zwaenepoel, "Implementation and Performance of Munin," Proc. 13th ACM Symp. Operating Systems Principles, ACM Press, New York, 1991, pp. 152-164.]]

Digital Library

[19]

P. Keleher, et al., "TreadMarks: Distributed Shared Memory on Standard Workstations and Operating Systems," Proc. Usenix Winter Conf., Usenix Assoc., Berkeley, Calif., 1994, pp. 115-132.]]

Digital Library

[20]

J.P. Singh W.-D. Weber and A. Gupta, "Splash: Stanford Parallel Applications for Shared Memory," Tech. Report CSL-TR-91-469, Stanford Univ., Stanford, Calif., 1991.]]

Digital Library

[21]

B.N. Bershad M.J. Zekauskas and W.A. Sawdon, "The Midway Distributed Shared Memory System," Compcon 93, CS Press, 1993, pp. 528-537.]]

[22]

I. Schoinas, et al., "Fine-Grain Access Control for Distributed Shared Memory," Proc. Sixth Int'l Conf. Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, ACM Press, 1994, pp. 297-306.]]

Digital Library

[23]

B. Fleisch and G. Popek, "Mirage: A Coherent Distributed Shared Memory Design," Proc. 14th ACM Symp. Operating System Principles, ACM Press, 1989, pp. 211-223.]]

Digital Library

[24]

U. Ramachandran and M.Y.A. Khalidi, "An Implementation of Distributed Shared Memory," Software Practice and Experience, Vol. 21, No. 5, May 1991, pp. 443-464.]]

Digital Library

[25]

S. Ahuja N. Carriero and D. Gelernter, "Linda and Friends," Computer, Vol. 19, No. 8, May 1986, pp. 26-34.]]

Digital Library

[26]

H.E. Bal and A.S. Tannenbaum, "Distributed Programming with Shared Data," Int'l Conf. on Computer Languages, CS Press, 1988, pp. 82-91.]]

[27]

G. Delp D. Farber and R. Minnich, "Memory as a Network Abstraction," IEEE Network, July 1991, pp. 34-41.]]

[28]

D. Lenoski, et al., "The Stanford DASH Multiprocessor," Computer, Vol. 25, No. 3, Mar. 1992, pp. 63-79.]]

Digital Library

[29]

D.V. James, "The Scalable Coherent Interface: Scaling to High-Performance Systems," Compcon 94, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1994, pp. 64-71.]]

[30]

S. Frank, et al. "The KSR1: Bridging the Gap Between Shared Memory and MPPs," Compcon 93, CS Press, 1993, pp. 285-294.]]

[31]

E. Hagersten A. Landin and S. Haridi, "DDM—A Cache-Only Memory Architecture," Computer, Vol. 25, No. 9, Sept. 1992, pp. 44-54.]]

Digital Library

[32]

S. Lucci, et al., "Reflective-Memory Multiprocessor," Proc. 28th IEEE/ACM Hawaii Int'l Conf. System Sciences, CS Press, 1995, pp. 85-94.]]

Digital Library

[33]

C. Maples and L. Wittie, "Merlin: A Superglue for Multicomputer Systems," Compcon 90, CS Press, 1990, pp. 73-81.]]

[34]

R. Bisani and M. Ravishankar, "Plus: A Distributed Shared-Memory System," Proc. 17th Ann. Int'l Symp. Computer Architecture, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1990, pp. 115-124.]]

Digital Library

[35]

A. Wilson R. LaRowe and M. Teller, "Hardware Assist for Distributed Shared Memory," Proc. 13th Int'l Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems, CS Press, 1993, pp. 246-255.]]

[36]

D. Chaiken J. Kubiatowicz and A. Agarwal, "Software-Extended Coherent Shared Memory: Performance and Cost," Proc. 21th Ann. Int'l Symp. Computer Architecture, CS Press, 1994, pp. 314-324.]]

Digital Library

[37]

J. Kuskin, et al., "The Stanford Flash Multiprocessor," Proc. 21th Ann. Int'l Symp. Computer Architecture, CS Press, 1994, pp. 302-313.]]

Digital Library

[38]

S. Reinhardt J. Larus and D. Wood, "Tempest and Typhoon: User-Level Shared Memory," Proc. 21th Ann. Int'l Symp. Computer Architecture, CS Press, 1994, pp. 325-336.]]

Digital Library

[39]

L. Iftode J. Pal Singh and K. Li, "Scope Consistency: A Bridge Between Release Consistency and Entry Consistency," to be published in Proc. Eighth Ann. Symp. Parallel Algorithms and Architectures, CS Press, 1996.]]

Digital Library

[40]

M. Hill J. Larus and S. Reinhardt, "Cooperative Shared Memory: Software and Hardware for Scalable Multiprocessors," ACM Trans. Computer Systems, ACM Press, New York, 1993, pp. 300-318.]]

Digital Library

[41]

R. Chandra, et al., "Performance Evaluation of Hybrid Hardware and Software Distributed Shared Memory Protocols," Tech. Report No. CSL-TR-93-597, Stanford Univ., Palo Alto, Calif., 1993.]]

Cited By

Feng GCao HZhu XYu BWang YMa ZChen SChen W(2023)TriCache: A User-Transparent Block Cache Enabling High-Performance Out-of-Core Processing with In-Memory ProgramsACM Transactions on Storage10.1145/358313919:2(1-30)Online publication date: 22-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3583139
Chuang HManaouil KXing TBarbalace AOlivier PHeerekar BRavindran BFedorova ANarayanan DDi Luna GQuerzoni L(2023)Aggregate VM: Why Reduce or Evict VM's Resources When You Can Borrow Them From Other Nodes?Proceedings of the Eighteenth European Conference on Computer Systems10.1145/3552326.3587452(469-487)Online publication date: 8-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3552326.3587452
Wang RWang JIdreos SÖzsu MAref W(2022)The case for distributed shared-memory databases with RDMA-enabled memory disaggregationProceedings of the VLDB Endowment10.14778/3561261.356126316:1(15-22)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.14778/3561261.3561263
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Distributed Shared Memory: Concepts and Systems
1. Hardware
  1. Integrated circuits
    1. Semiconductor memory
      1. Dynamic memory
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Memory management
        Distributed memory
    2. Software system structures
      1. Distributed systems organizing principles

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

Compiling shared-memory applications for distributed-memory systems
Exploiting Distributed-Memory and Shared-Memory Parallelism on Clusters of SMPs with Data Parallel Programs

Clusters of SMPs are hybrid-parallel architectures that combine the main concepts of distributed-memory and shared-memory parallel machines. Although SMP clusters are widely used in the high performance computing community, there exists no single ...
Multigrain shared memory

Parallel workstations, each comprising tens of processors based on shared memory, promise cost-effective scalable multiprocessing. This article explores the coupling of such small- to medium-scale shared-memory multiprocessors through software over a ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology: Systems & Technology

IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology: Systems & Technology Volume 4, Issue 2

June 1996

95 pages

ISSN:1063-6552

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © Copyright © 1996 IEEE. All Rights Reserved.

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society Press

Washington, DC, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 June 1996

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

41
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 04 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Feng GCao HZhu XYu BWang YMa ZChen SChen W(2023)TriCache: A User-Transparent Block Cache Enabling High-Performance Out-of-Core Processing with In-Memory ProgramsACM Transactions on Storage10.1145/358313919:2(1-30)Online publication date: 22-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3583139
Chuang HManaouil KXing TBarbalace AOlivier PHeerekar BRavindran BFedorova ANarayanan DDi Luna GQuerzoni L(2023)Aggregate VM: Why Reduce or Evict VM's Resources When You Can Borrow Them From Other Nodes?Proceedings of the Eighteenth European Conference on Computer Systems10.1145/3552326.3587452(469-487)Online publication date: 8-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3552326.3587452
Wang RWang JIdreos SÖzsu MAref W(2022)The case for distributed shared-memory databases with RDMA-enabled memory disaggregationProceedings of the VLDB Endowment10.14778/3561261.356126316:1(15-22)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.14778/3561261.3561263
Jia XZhang JYu BQian XQi ZGuan H(2022)GiantVM: A Novel Distributed Hypervisor for Resource Aggregation with DSM-aware OptimizationsACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization10.1145/350525119:2(1-27)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3505251
Jaroš MŘíha LStrakoš PŠpeťko M(2021)GPU Accelerated Path Tracing of Massive ScenesACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/344780740:2(1-17)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3447807
Chuang HLyerly RLankes SRavindran B(2020)Scaling Shared Memory Multiprocessing Applications in Non-cache-coherent DomainsProceedings of the 13th ACM International Systems and Storage Conference10.1145/3383669.3398278(13-24)Online publication date: 30-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3383669.3398278
Zhang JDing ZChen YJia XYu BQi ZGuan HNagarakatte SBaumann AKasikci B(2020)GiantVMProceedings of the 16th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments10.1145/3381052.3381324(30-44)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3381052.3381324
Orenbach MMichalevsky YFetzer CSilberstein MDan TDahlia M(2019)CoSMIXProceedings of the 2019 USENIX Conference on Usenix Annual Technical Conference10.5555/3358807.3358854(555-570)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3358807.3358854
Yang JIzraelevitz JSwanson SMerchant AWeatherspoon H(2019)OrionProceedings of the 17th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies10.5555/3323298.3323319(221-234)Online publication date: 25-Feb-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3323298.3323319
Fujishima HYokoyama TYoo M(2019)Distributed Shared Memory with CAN-Based Prioritized Mutual Exclusion for Embedded Control SystemsProceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer and Communications Management10.1145/3348445.3348478(32-37)Online publication date: 27-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3348445.3348478
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents