A Performance Evaluation of the Hemingway DSM System on a Network of SMPs
Abstract
Numerous designs for software distributed shared memory systems have been proposed. Most designs use uniprocessor workstations as the building blocks. In recent years there has been an increase in commodity multiprocessor workstations, with hardware-maintained internal memory coherence mechanisms. In this paper we investigate the performance of a software distributed shared memory system, Hemingway, which is built out of such multiprocessor workstations, utilizing off-the-shelf communication networks. The effectiveness of this system can be evaluated by studying performance as a function of both the total number of processors in the system and the degree of clustering (size of multiprocessor workstations). We evaluated the performance of Hemingway with systems of up to 8 processors, with different levels of clustering. We also compared the performance of our protocol with a similar, established protocol, the Munin protocol. Our results describe a system that scales well both with the number of processors and with clustering. Moreover, our studies indicate that the Hemingway protocol requires lower intra-workstation and inter- workstation network bandwidths than other protocols. Overall we have found that clustering is very effective in increasing performance in software DSM systems built with multiwriter, write-through memory consistency policies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA461990
Entities
People
- Anshu Aggarwal
- Dirk Grumwald
Organizations
- University of Colorado Boulder