A load sharing scheme for SCI distributed shared memory systems

SCI-connected local area multiprocessor (SCI-LAMP) is an innovative architectural model in which a number of personal workstations are connected by the SCI interconnection network. SCI (scalable coherent interface) is an IEEE standard that supports distributed shared memory with cache coherence on point-to-point networks. SCI-LAMP system is more tightly coupled than the traditional local area networks because of the availability of such shared memory between workstations. It is still however, distributed in nature as opposed to the bus based shared-memory multiprocessors and hence the problems associated with distributed systems such as load sharing still need to be addressed. The presence of shared memory can be taken advantage of to collect and distribute the global state information. This paper presents a receiver-initiated scheme which utilizes the distributed shared memory to achieve load sharing on SCI-LAMP systems