TreadMarks: distributed shared memory on standard workstations and operating systems

Abstract

TreadMarks is a distributed shared memory (DSM) system for standard Unix systems suchas SunOS and Ultrix. This paper presents a performance evaluation of TreadMarks running on Ultrix using DECstation-5000#240's that are connected by a 100-Mbps switch-based ATM LAN and a 10-Mbps Ethernet. Our objective is to determine the efficiency of a user-level DSM implementation on commercially available workstations and operating systems. We achieved good speedups on the 8-processor ATM network for Jacobi #7.4#, TSP #7.2#, Quicksort #6.3#, and ILINK #5.7#. For a slightly modified version of Water from the SPLASH benchmark suite, weachieved only moderate speedups #4.0# due to the high communication and synchronization rate. Speedups decline on the 10-Mbps Ethernet #5.5 for Jacobi, 6.5 for TSP, 4.2 for Quicksort, 5.1 for ILINK, and 2.1 for Water#, reflecting the bandwidth limitations of the Ethernet. These results support the contention that, with suitable networking technology, DSM is a viabl...