An Automated Framework for Developing Efficient Hardware DSM Protocols

We address the problem of developing efficient cache coherence protocols implementing distributed shared memory (DSM) using message passing. A serious drawback of traditional approaches to this problem is that designers are required to state the desired coherence protocol at the level of asynchronous message interactions. We propose a method in which designers express the desired protocol at a highlevel using rendezvous communication. These descriptions are much easier to understand and computationally more efficient to verify than asynchronous protocols due to their small state spaces. The rendezvous protocol can also be synthesized into efficient asynchronous protocols. We present our protocol refinement procedure, prove its soundness, and illustrate its efficacy.