Optimized Memory-Based Messaging: Leveraging the Memory System of High-Performance Communication

摘要

Memory-based messaging, passing messages between programs using shared memory, isa recognized technique for efficient communication that takes advantage of memory system performance. However, the conventional operating system support for this approach is inefficient, especially for large-scale multiprocessor interconnects, and is too complex to effectively support in hardware. This paper describes hardware and software optimizations for memory-based messaging that efficiently exploit the mechanisms of the memory system to provide superior communication performance. We describe the overall model of optimized memory-based messaging, its implementation in an operating system kernel and hardware support for this approach in a scalable multiprocessor architecture. The optimizations include address-valued signals, message-oriented memory consistency and automatic signaling on write. Performance evaluations show these extensions provide a three-to-five-fold improvement in communication performance over a comparable software-only implementation.