An adaptive heterogeneous software DSM

This paper presents a mechanism to run parallel applications in heterogeneous, dynamic environments while maintaining thread synchrony. A heterogeneous software DSM is used to provide synchronization constructs similar to Pthreads, while providing for individual thread mobility. An asymmetric data conversion scheme is adopted to restore thread states among different computers during thread migration. Within this framework we create a mechanism capable of maintaining the distributed state between migrated (and possibly heterogeneous) threads. We show that thread synchrony can be maintained with minimal overhead and minimal burden to the programmer