A Compiler-Directed Distributed Shared Memory System

of the Dissertation A Compiler-Directed Distributed Shared Memory System by Manish Verma Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science State University of New York at Stony Brook 1996 This dissertation presents Locust, a compiler-directed distributed shared memory system for parallel computing in a network of workstations (NOW) environment that is shared with other routine applications. The focus of the Locust project is on scientific and engineering numerical applications with regular computation structures. The main drawback of a commodity NOW platform is the high cost of communication in this environment. Locust strives to overcome this handicap by reducing both the total amount of communication and the overhead associated with every individual communication operation. The first half of the dissertation focuses on a new version based generational cache coherence (GCC) protocol that uses compiler generated data access pattern information to minimize coherence traffic and to maximally o..