Abstract

In this paper we present the thread migration mechanism of DSM-PEPE, a multithreaded distributed shared memory system. DSM systems like DSM-PEPE provide a parallel environment to harness the available computing power of computer networks. DSM systems offer a virtual shared memory space on top of a distributed-memory multicomputer, featuring the scalability and low cost of a multicomputer, and the ease of programming of a shared-memory multiprocessor. DSM systems rely on data migration to make data available to running threads. The thread migration mechanism of DSM-PEPE was designed as an alternative to this data migration paradigm. Threads are allowed to migrate from one node to another, as needed by the computation. We show by experimentation the feasibility of the thread migration mechanism of DSM-PEPE as an alternative to improve application perfomance by enhancing spatial locality. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.