SHRIMP: Architectural and Systems Support for Inexpensive, High-Performance Multicomputers

该项目正在利用商用台式计算机系统和现成的互连构建高性能多处理器。商用英特尔奔腾工作站主板(每个主板都连接了内存、磁盘和I/O)连接到Paragon底板。通信使用一种称为虚拟内存映射通信的新机制，该机制将处理器间通信伪装为对内存的写操作。节点接口将各个节点的存储器中的物理页面彼此映射，从而对一个映射页面的写入导致到共享该映射页面的其他节点的消息。各个节点上的操作系统使用其普通的虚拟内存机制来支持虚拟页面映射。除了这种逐字通信之外，还可以使用DMA传输，控制寄存器位于各个进程的地址空间中。这允许保持用户级别保护的高带宽通信。该项目要解决的研究包括进程间高带宽低延迟通信的实现，新通信机制支持的I/O系统的结构，以及由此产生的系统的性能评估。

This project is building a high-performance multiprocessor from commodity desktop computer systems and off-the-shelf interconnects. Commercial Intel Pentium workstation boards, each with attached memory, disk, and I/O, are attached to a Paragon backplane. Communication uses a new mechanism called virtual memory-mapped communication, which disguises interprocessor communication as write operations to memory. The node interface maps physical pages in the memories of individual nodes to each other, so that a write to one mapped page results in messages to other nodes that share the mapped page. The operating systems on the individual nodes use their ordinary virtual memory mechanism to support virtual page mapping. In addition to this word-by-word communication, DMA transfers are available, with control registers located in the address space of individual processes. This allows high bandwidth communication that maintains user-level protection. Research to be addressed in the project includes the achievement of high-bandwith low-latency communication between processes, the structure of an I/O system supported by the new communication mechanism, and performance evaluation of the resulting system.