Software primitives for emulation of multiprocessor architectures

Author

Svensson, Anders

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Eng., Lund Univ., Sweden

Volume

i

fYear

1990

fDate

2-5 Jan 1990

Firstpage

48

Abstract

An experimental emulation facility developed to evaluate design principles for multiple-instruction/multiple-data multiprocessors with distributed shared memory, is discussed. The hardware of the 38 processing elements is designed to support efficient emulation of mechanisms that would be implemented in hardware in the real system. One processor in each processing element executes the application while another processor runs the emulation software. A software environment and primitives are presented to simplify efficient implementation of emulators. A flexible system-call mechanism is provided for exchanging messages between the execution and the emulation processors. A separate bus communication mechanism is provided for implementation of interprocessor protocols, and software probes are used for monitoring purposes. Emulation principles are illustrated by implementation of a virtual memory system

Keywords

multiprocessing systems; parallel architectures; virtual machines; MIMD multiprocessors; bus communication mechanism; design principles; distributed shared memory; emulation processors; emulation software; execution processors; experimental emulation facility; interprocessor protocols; message exchange; monitoring; multiple-instruction/multiple-data multiprocessors; multiprocessor architectures; processing elements; software environment; software primitives; software probes; system-call mechanism; virtual memory system; Application software; Buildings; Computational modeling; Computer architecture; Computer displays; Emulation; Hardware; Probes; Process design; Protocols;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Sciences, 1990., Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Hawaii International Conference on

Conference_Location

Kailua-Kona, HI

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HICSS.1990.205098

Filename

205098