Software Versus Hardware Shared-Memory Implementation: A Case Study

We comparethe performance of software-supported shared memory on a general-purpose network to hardware-supported shared memory on a dedicated interconnect. Up to eight processors, our results are based on the execution of a set of application programs on a SGI 4D 480multiprocessor and on TreadMarks, a distributed shared memory system that runs on a Fore ATM LAN of DECstation-5000 240s. Since the DECstation and the 4D 480 use the same processor, primary cache, and compiler, the shared-memory implementation is the principal di erence between the systems. Our results show that TreadMarks performs comparably to the 4D 480 for applications with moderate amounts of synchronization, but the di erence inperformancegrowsas the synchronizationfrequency increases. Forapplicationsthatrequire alarge amount of memory bandwidth, TreadMarks performs slightly better than the SGI 4D 480. Beyond eight processors, our results are based on execution-driven simulation. Speci cally, we compare a software im...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1994
• Where: ISCA
• Authors: Alan L. Cox, Sandhya Dwarkadas, Peter J. Keleher, Honghui Lu, Ramakrishnan Rajamony, Willy Zwaenepoel
• Keywords: Hardware, Hardware-supported Shared Memory, ISCA 1994, Shared Memory, Software-supported Shared Memory