A hierarchical message mechanism for distributed systems software

The authors investigate a mechanism for distributed computer systems that can support control and data communication right from the beginning of a distributed-software design to the actual execution and maintenance. The concept of message hierarchy is illustrated by an example of remote rendezvous in distributed systems. The control messages need a faster communication structure than the data messages. This observation suggests two-speed communication structure as a realization of hierarchical message systems. The two-speed structure involves four major components per node: communication links with different transmission speeds, a message arbiter, a node information table (NIT), and a system node directory (SND). A major benefit of a system based on hierarchical message-passing is that the desired systemwide information can be updated very quickly.<>