Performance Modeling of Eagersharing Distributed Memory Systems

Distributed Shared Memory(DSM) systems have been proposed to overcome the shortcomings of traditional shared memory and message-passing systems and to combine their advantages. Based on an owner-initiated data transfer method, eagersharing systems can greatly reduce access latencies for remote data by keeping copies of shared values in local memories and updating them immediately after changes. Demand-driven DSM systems use a consumer-initiated data transfer method which has a processor fetch a remote datum only when needed. This paper presents an analytical model for evaluating the performance of DSM systems running any given application algorithm. This paper uses this model to compare performances of three cases: eagersharing DSM systems with global data sharing scheme; eagersharing DSM systems with selective data sharing; and demand-driven DSM systems with prefetch mechanisms. By studying the impact of different data sharing schemes and data transfer methods on system performance, t..