Causal Memory: Implementation, Programming Support and Experiences

Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) has become an accepted abstraction for programming distributed systems. Although DSM simpliies the programming of distributed applications, maintaining a consistent shared memory can be expensive. Weakly ordered systems which use synchronization information have been proposed to reduce the frequency of communication between processors. We have implemented a weakly ordered system based on the Causal memory model. We provide language and runtime support which allow programs to run eeciently on Causal memory. Actual implementation results show a signiicant reduction in the number of messages when compared to a system maintaining a consistent shared memory.

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