SCI-VM: A flexible base for transparent shared memory programming models on clusters of PCs
Martin Schulz(Technische Universitaet Muenchen, LRR-TUM
)
To appear at (HIPS'99), San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA, April 12, 1999
Abstract
Clusters of PCs are traditionally programmed using the message
passing paradigm as this is directly supported by their loosely
coupled architecture. Shared memory programming is mostly
neglected although it is commonly seen as the easier and more
intuitive way of parallel programming. Based on the user-level
remote memory capabilities of the Scalable Coherent Interface,
this paper presents the concept of the SCI Virtual Memory
which allows a cluster-wide virtual memory abstraction. This
SCI Virtual Memory offers a flexible basis for a large variety
of shared memory programming models which will be demonstrated
in this paper based on an SPMD model.
