A UNIX distributed shared memory system

A distributed shared memory system (DSM) is presented which allows multiple clients to send and receive information from a DSM server on a heterogeneous network. DSM primitives, which follow the structure of UNIX System V IPCs, are provided, and include semaphores for synchronization. This allows multiple client processes, residing on separate hosts, synchronous access to a DSM region residing on the DSM server. A matrix multiplication example is presented which compares the performance of the DSM system with a local shared memory system (SM), and with a single host which computes the result serially. For matrix dimensions of 200 x 200, both the DSM and SM systems, each using four servers, were over three times faster than the results obtained from the single host. In addition, analysis is provided to determine the minimum size of the matrices required to make distribution of the matrix multiplication problem worthwhile.