Improving the Performance of DSM Systems via Compiler Involvement

Distributed shared memory (DSM) systems provide an illusion of shared memory on distributed memory systems such as workstation networks and some parallel computers such as the Cray T3D and Convex SPP-1. This illusion is provided either by enhancements to hardware, software, or a combination thereof. On these systems, users can write programs using a shared memory style of programming instead of message passing which is tedious and error prone. Our experience with one such system, TreadMarks, has shown that a large class of applications do not perform well on these systems. TreadMarks is a software distributed shared memory system designed by Rice University researchers to run on networks of workstations and massively parallel computers. Due to the distributed nature of the memory system, shared memory synchronization primitives such as locks and barriers often cause significant amounts of communication. We have provided a set of powerful primitives that will alleviate the problems with..