Distributed shared memory using the .NET framework

The paper introduces a software-only object based Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) implementation designed as an extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework, which adds facilities for sharing objects following the Multiple Readers Multiple Writer (MRMW) memory model, including object replication. The presented implementation is facilitated by a memory coherence protocol previously developed by the author, which uses group communication using IP multicasting and delivers causally consistent memory. The paper describes an attempt to implement the DSM wholly in the context of .NET Remoting by extending it with an UDP-based channel service, a proxy implementation for object access interception and threads performing the receiving and sending parts of the coherence protocol, as well as the final implementation approach. The described DSM implementation allows the construction of distributed applications with a simple programming model, that can be deployed in any networked environment where multicast is available.