Exploiting Temporal and Spatial Constraints on Distributed Shared Objects
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Abstract
The advent of gigabit network technologies has made it possible to combine
sets of uni- and multiprocessor workstations into a distributed,
massively-parallel computer system. Middleware, such as distributed shared
objects (DSO), attempts to improve programmability of such systems, by
providing globally accessible 'object' abstractions. Early research on
distributed shared object systems concerned protocols to maintain
consistency across replicated 'memory' objects. Such systems are well suited
to scientific applications but have limited support for multimedia or
groupware applications. This paper addresses the state sharing needs of
complex distributed applications with (1) high-frequency symmetric data
accesses to shared objects, (2) unpredictable and limited locality of data
access, (3) dynamically changing sharing behavior, and (4) potential data
races. We show that a DSO system that exploits application-level temporal
and spatial constraints on shared objects can outperform shared object
protocols which do not exploit application-level constraints. We describe
the features of our S(emantic) DSO and compare three application specific
consistency protocols, developed to run on our system against entry
consistency for a sample application having the four properties mentioned
above.
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Date
1996
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437638 bytes
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Text
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Technical Report