The use of networks of workstations for parallel computing is becoming increasingly common. Networks of workstations are attractive for a large class of parallel applications that can tolerate the higher network latencies and lower bandwidth associated with commodity networks. Several software packages, such as TreadMarks, have been developed to provide a common view of global memory, allowing many shared-memory parallel applications to be easily ported to networks of workstations. This paper investigates in detail the performance of several TreadMarks-based shared-memory applications on a modern network of workstations, identifying the extent to which different system components affect the efficiency of these applications.
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