Automating Data Conversion for Heterogeneous Distributed Shared Memory

This paper describes the issues involved in sharing data among processes executing co-operatively in a heterogeneous computing environment. In a heterogeneous environment, the physical representation of a data object may need to be transformed when the object is moved from one type of processor to another. As a part of a larger project to build a heterogeneous distributed shared memory system we developed an automated tool for generating the conversion routines that are used to implement representation conversion for data objects. We developed a novel method for processing source programs that allowed us to extract detailed information about the physical representation of data objects without access to the source code of the compilers that were generating those representations. A performance comparison with the more general XDR heterogeneous data conversion package shows that the customized conversion routines that we generate are 4 to 8 times faster.