Report Number: CSL-TR-94-623
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: Communication Mechanisms in Shared Memory Multiprocessors
Author: Byrd, Gregory T.
Author: Delagi, Bruce A.
Author: Flynn, Michael J.
Date: May 1994
Abstract: Shared memory systems generally support consumer-initiated communication; when a process needs data, it is retrieved from the global memory. Systems that were designed around the message passing model, on the other hand, support producer-initiated communication mechanisms; the producer of data sends it directly to the other processes that require it. Parallel applications require both kinds of communication. In this paper, we examine the performance of five shared-memory communication mechanisms -- invalidate-based cache coherence, prefetch, locks, deliver, and StreamLine -- to determine the effectiveness of architectural support for efficient producer-initiated communication. We find that StreamLine, a cached-based message passing mechanism, offers the best performance on our simulated benchmarks. In addition, StreamLine is much less sensitive to system parameters such as cache line size and network performance.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/94/623/CSL-TR-94-623.pdf