Efficient and Scalable Distributed Shared Memory System

This thesis presents the design and implementation of our novel hybrid software DSM system. We call our system hybrid home-based EAC (HHEAC) since the system implements our novel exclusive access consistency model (EAC) based on the hybrid protocol of the homeless and home-based protocols. HHEAC guarantees only that shared variables inside a critical section are up to date before the accesses. Other shared variables outside a critical section are guaranteed to be up to date after the next barrier synchronisation. Our home-based DSM implementation is different from the previous implementations in that a home node does not receive any diffs from non-home nodes until the next barrier synchronisation. It is also different in that during a lock synchronisation required diffs are prefetched before the critical section, which reduces not only data traffic but also page faults inside the critical section. We also present a diff integration technique that can further unnecessary data traffic during lock synchronisation. This technique is especially effective in reducing data traffic for migratory applications.