Experiences Developing a Virtual Shared Memory System Using High-Level Object Paradigms

Shared-memory programming is still a common and popular way of utilizing parallel machines for high-performance computing. Virtual shared memory (VSM) systems promote a gentle migration path allowing the execution of shared-memory programs on distributed-memory machines. Such kind of systems are both complex and extremely sensitive to performance issues. Therefore many VSM systems still handle distribution aspects manually by means of low-level message-passing operations to gain maximum performance. In contrast, in the Peace operating system family almost all distribution aspects have been covered conveniently and yet efficiently by so-called dual objects. In this paper the VSM subsystem, called Vote, of Peace is presented as a case study for complex systems services that claim for high-level but lightweight object models with an efficient implementation.