BIB-VERSION:: CS-TR-v2.0
          ID:: STAN//CSL-TR-94-623
       ENTRY:: October 12, 1994
ORGANIZATION:: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
       TITLE:: Communication Mechanisms in Shared Memory Multiprocessors
        TYPE:: Technical Report
      AUTHOR:: Byrd, Gregory T.
      AUTHOR:: Delagi, Bruce A.
      AUTHOR:: Flynn, Michael J.
        DATE:: May 1994
       PAGES:: 27
    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.
       NOTES:: [Adminitrivia V1/Prg/19941012]
         END:: STAN//CSL-TR-94-623