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Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing pp 1848–1855Cite as

Software Distributed Shared Memory

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Synonyms

Implementations of shared memory in software; Shared virtual memory; Virtual shared memory

Definition

Software distributed shared memory (SDSM) refers to the implementation of shared memory in software on systems that do not provide hardware support for data coherence and consistency across nodes (and the memory therein).

Discussion

Introduction

Executing an application in parallel requires the coordination of computation and the communication of data to respect dependences among tasks. Historically, multiprocessor machines provide either a shared memory or a message passing model for data communication in hardware (with models such as partitioned global address spaces that fall in between the two extremes). In the message passing model, communication and coordination across processes is achieved via explicit messages. In the shared memory model, communication and coordination is achieved by directly reading and writing memory that is accessible by multiple processes and...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dr., Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

    Sandhya Dwarkadas

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  1. Sandhya Dwarkadas
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    David Padua

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Dwarkadas, S. (2011). Software Distributed Shared Memory. In: Padua, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_492

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