Abstract

Distributed shared memory systems provide an easy-to-program parallel environment, to harness the available computing power of PC networks. We present a layered architecture that allows a portable, scalable, and low-cost implementation that runs on Linux and Windows. Only a few, low-level, modules are operating-system dependent; synchronization, distributed memory and consistency management, as well as multithreading are mostly independent. Preliminary results are encouraging; the Linux port performed well, showing high efficiency. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.