Shared virtual memory: progress and challenges

Shared virtual memory, a technique for supporting a shared address space in software on parallel systems, has undergone a decade of research, with significant maturing of protocols and communication layers having now been achieved. We provide a survey of the key developments in this research, placing the multitrack flow of ideas and results obtained so far in a comprehensive new framework. Four major research tracks are covered: relaxed consistency models; protocol laziness; architectural support; and application-driven research. Several related avenues are also discussed, such as fine grained software coherence, software protocols across multiprocessor nodes, and performance scalability. We summarize comparative performance results from the literature, discuss their limitations, and identify lessons learned so far, key outstanding questions, and important directions for future research in this area