Coherence for Photonically Scalable Shared Memory Systems

This paper develops a framework for simulations, where a system component is represented inthe simulation by a module of source code, isolated from the rest of the program. A message passing facility is used for inter-module communication. By writing simulations in this way, it is faster and more reliable to create simulations for comparison purposes. This idea is validated by the simulation of two Optically Interconnected Distributed Shared Memory systems. Essentially similar, they employ a photonic network using wavelength division multiple access to create multiple channels on a single optical fiber as an interconnection network. However, different media access protocols were used. With the developed simulation framework, replacing the module that simulated the media access protocol was all that was necessary, showing the significant performance impact of the media access protocol.