Design of a network shared memory based workstation cluster

Abstract

Network shared memory (NSM) is a low-cost approach for clustering the processing elements of commodity workstations into a single, shared-memory, mid-range parallel computer. This approach is based upon a new way of looking at the role of communication networks in multi-computer systems. The simulation results indicate that the NSM approach has the potential to outperform existing approaches for workstation clustering. In the NSM approach, each workstation has an add-on interface card, called the Network Memory Interface (NMI) card, that is used to interconnect workstations processing elements into a parallel computer. Collectively, the NMIs implement network shared memory, i.e., the coherent, shared address space of all the processors in the cluster. The authors focus on the protocol that is used by the NMIs to communicate with one another.