A Distributed Shared-Memory System on a Workstation Cluster Using Fast Serial Links

In this paper, a fast serial link, Serial Transparent Asynchronous First-in First-out Link (STAFF-Link), is introduced. Using such links, we construct a parallel processing system based on a workstation cluster. The workstation cluster implements a distributed sharedmemory mechanism for inter-process communication using a software controlled cache using a STAFF-Link router board. The board has a chained multicast capability with which we have implemented efficient invalidation protocol based on Eager Release Consistency (ERC) model in the DSM system. Performance results on several application programs from the SPLASH2 benchmark suites have been measured.