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Distributed shared arrays: A distributed virtual machine with mobility support for reconfiguration

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Abstract

Distributed Shared Arrays (DSA) is a distributed virtual machine that supports Java-compliant multithreaded programming with mobility support for system reconfiguration in distributed environments. The DSA programming model allows programmers to explicitly control data distribution so as to take advantage of the deep memory hierarchy, while relieving them from error-prone orchestration of communication and synchronization at run-time. The DSA system is developed as an integral component of mobility support middleware for Grid computing so that DSA-based virtual machines can be reconfigured to adapt to the varying resource supplies or demand over the course of a computation. The DSA runtime system also features a directory-based cache coherence protocol in support of replication of user-defined sharing granularity and a communication proxy mechanism for reducing network contention. System reconfiguration is achieved by a DSA service migration mechanism, which moves the DSA service and residing computational agents between physical servers for load balancing and fault resilience. We demonstrate the programmability of the model in a number of parallel applications and evaluate its performance by application benchmark programs, in particular, the impact of the coherence granularity and service migration overhead.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 48202

    Song Fu, Cheng-Zhong Xu, Brian Wims & Ramzi Basharahil

Authors
  1. Song Fu
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  2. Cheng-Zhong Xu
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Correspondence to Cheng-Zhong Xu.

Additional information

Song Fu received the BS degreee in computer science from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China, in 1999, and the MS degree in computer science from Nanjing University, China, in 2002. He is currently a PhD candidate in computer engineering at Wayne State University. His research interests include the resource management, security, and mobility issues in wide-area distributed systems.

Cheng-Zhong Xu received the BS and MS degrees in computer science from Nanjing University in 1986 and 1989, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Hong Kong in 1993. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer of Wayne State University. His research interests lie in distributed are in distributed and parallel systems, particularly in resource management for high performance cluster and grid computing and scalable and secure Internet services. He has published more than100 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conference proceedings in these areas. He is the author of the book Scalable and Secure Internet Services and Architecture (CRC Press, 2005) and a co-author of the book Load Balancing in Parallel Computers: Theory and Practice (Kluwer Academic, 1997). He serves on the editorial boards of J. of Parallel and Distributed Computing, J. of Parallel, Emergent, and Distributed Systems, J. of High Performance Computing and Networking, and J. of Computers and Applications. He was the founding program co-chair of International Workshop on Security in Systems and Networks (SSN), the general co-chair of the IFIP 2006 International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC06), and a member of the program committees of numerous conferences. His research was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation, NASA, and Cray Research. He is a recipient of the Faculty Research Award of Wayne State University in 2000, the Presidents Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002, and the Career Development Chair Award in 2003. He is a senior member of the IEEE.

Brian A. Wims was born in Washington, DC in 1967. He received the Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from GMI-EMI (now called Kettering University) in 1990; and Master of Science in Computer Engineering from Wayne State University in 1999. His research interests are primarily in the fields of parallel and distributed systems with applications in Mobile Agent technologies.

From 1990–2001 he worked in various Engineering positions in General Motors, including Electrical Analysis, Software Design, and Test and Development. In 2001, he joined the General Motors IS&S department where he is currently a Project Manager in the Computer Aided Test group. Responsibilities include managing the development of test automation applications in the Electrical, EMC, and Safety Labs.

Ramzi Basharahil was born in Aden, Yemen in 1972. He received the Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the United Arab Emirates University. He graduated top of his engineering graduated class of 1997. He obtained Master of Science degree in 2001 from Wayne State University in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His main research interests are primarily in the fields of parallel and distributed systems with applications to distributed processing across cluster of servers.

From 1997 to 1998, he worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the UAE University. In 2000, he joined Internet Security Systems as a security software engineer. He later joined NetIQ Corporation in 2002 and still working since then. He is leading the security events trending and events management software development where he is involved in designing and the implementing event/log managements products.

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Fu, S., Xu, CZ., Wims, B. et al. Distributed shared arrays: A distributed virtual machine with mobility support for reconfiguration. Cluster Comput 9, 237–255 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-006-9739-2

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