Java PastSet: a structured distributed shared memory system

The architecture and performance of a Java implementation of a structured distributed shared memory system, PastSet, is described. The PastSet abstraction allows programmers to write applications that run efficiently on different architectures, from clusters to widely distributed systems. PastSet is a tuple-based three-dimensional structured distributed shared memory system, which provides the programmer with operations to perform causally ordered reads and writes of tuples to a virtual structured memory space called the PastSet. It is shown that the original, native code, PastSet is able to outperform MPI and PVM when running real applications and that the design translates into Java so that Java PastSet is a qualified competitor to other cluster application programming interfaces for Java.