An Evaluation Study of a LinkBased Data Diffusion Machine.pdfVIP

Published in: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Support for Large Scale Shared Memory Architectures In conjunction with 8th IPPS, April 26–29 1994, Cancun, Mexico, pages 115–128. An Evaluation Study of a Link-Based Data Diffusion Machiney Henk L. Mullerz Paul W.A. Stallard David H.D. Warren Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK. Working at: Partnership in Advanced Computing Technologies, Science Research Foundation, 10 Priory Road, Bristol. BS8 1TU, UK. email: henkmpaulwarrenpa ctsrfac uk Abstract data is grouped into items, similar to blocks or lines in cache terminology. The items are stored in set-associative The Data Diffusion Machine (DDM) is a virtual shared memories at the leaf nodes. The informationto keep track memory architecture in which the data has no home lo- of the data is conceptually stored in a tree of directory cation. In this paper we present a preliminary evaluation nodes above the leaf processors as shown in Figure 1. of a link-based DDM, show the influence of the major Each directory maintains the state of each data item held design parameters, and show the performance of a set of below it, also in a set-associative structure. The tree of eight benchmark programs. directories is used to locate data when a processor needs Most programs are sensitive to item size but to vary- to read it, and to locate all shared copies of a data item ing degrees. The associativity is unimportant for system