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Limited multiple-writer: An approach to dealing with false sharing in software DSMs

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Abstract

False sharing is one of the most important factors impacting the performance of DSM (distributed shared memory) systems. The single-writer approach is simple, but it cannot avoid the ping-pong effect of the data page thrashing, while the multiple-writer approach is effective for false sharing but with high cost. This paper proposes a new approach, called limited multiple-writer (LMW) to handling multiple writers in software DSM. It distinguishes two kinds of multiple-writer as lock-based form and barrier-based form, and handles them with different policies. It discards theTwin andDiff in traditional multiple-writer approach, and simplifies the implementation of multiple-writer in software DSM systems. The implementation of LMW in a CVM (Coherent Virtual Machine) software DSM system, which is based on a network of workstations, is introduced. Evaluation results show that for some applications such as SOR (Successive Over-Relaxation), LU (Lower triangular and Upper triangular), FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation), and IS (Integer Sorting), LMW provides a significant reduction in execution time (11%, 16%, 33% and 46%) compared with the traditional multiple-writer approach on the platform.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100080, Beijing, P.R. China

    Xie Xianghui & Han Chengde

Authors
  1. Xie Xianghui
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  2. Han Chengde
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Correspondence to Xie Xianghui.

Additional information

This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant No.69896250 and in part by the National Climbing Program of China.

XIE Xianghui received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Institute of Computing Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999. He is currently the sub-chief engineer of the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology. His research interests include high performance computer architecture, distributed parallel processing, network and computational environment.

HAN Chengde received his M.S. degree from the Institute of Computing Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a professor and a doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Computing Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include high performance computer architecture, multimedia, network, and VLSI design.

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Xie, X., Han, C. Limited multiple-writer: An approach to dealing with false sharing in software DSMs. J. Comput. Sci. & Technol. 15, 453–460 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02950409

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02950409

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