[comp.parallel] Data Sharing Statistics

galles@mips.com (Mike Galles) (12/18/90)

For purposes of protocol and design evaluation, the amount of data sharing
which occurs between various nodes in a shared memory system is a very
important statistic.  It is also important to know whether data that is
shared is more often clean or dirty.  After searching for references on 
this topic, I found only two articles which directly addressed these issues:


"A Characterization of Sharing in Parallel Programs and Its Application
to Coherency Protocol Evaluation", Eggers & Katz (UCB), 1988 IEEE


"Memory-Reference Characteristics of Multiprocessor Applications under MACH",
Agarwal & Gupta, 1988 Proceedings of ACM Sigmetrics


I would like more data on this topic, particularly more recent articles
addressing memory reference patterns for particular applications.  If you
know of any articles which fit this description, please mail me the title
and author(s).  If the response is good, I will post a summary of the
references I receive.


Thanks,

Mike Galles
galles@mips.com

retrac@titan.rice.edu (John Carter) (12/19/90)

In article <12327@hubcap.clemson.edu> galles@mips.com (Mike Galles) writes:
>For purposes of protocol and design evaluation, the amount of data sharing
>which occurs between various nodes in a shared memory system is a very
>important statistic.  It is also important to know whether data that is
>shared is more often clean or dirty.  After searching for references on 
>this topic, I found only two articles which directly addressed these issues:
>
>"A Characterization of Sharing in Parallel Programs and Its Application
>to Coherency Protocol Evaluation", Eggers & Katz (UCB), 1988 IEEE
>
>"Memory-Reference Characteristics of Multiprocessor Applications under MACH",
>Agarwal & Gupta, 1988 Proceedings of ACM Sigmetrics

The best conference proceedings to scan are probably ASPLOS, ISCA (Sigarch),
and Sigmetrics.  Here are a few more publications that you might want to
take a look at that address the issue to varying degrees:

@CONFERENCE{munin:sigarch90,
	AUTHOR = {John K. Bennett and John B. Carter and Willy Zwaenepoel},
	TITLE = {Adaptive Software Cache Management for
		Distributed Shared Memory Architectures},
	BOOKTITLE = sigarch90,
	PAGES = {125-134},
	MONTH = may,
	YEAR = 1990}

@PHDTHESIS{eggers:thesis,
	AUTHOR = {Susan J. Eggers},
	TITLE = {Simulation Analysis of Data Sharing
		in Shared Memory Multiprocessors},
	SCHOOL = {University of California at Berkeley},
	YEAR = 1989,
	MONTH = mar}

@CONFERENCE{eggers:performance,
	AUTHOR = {Susan J. Eggers and Randy H. Katz},
	TITLE = {The Effect of Sharing on the Cache and
		 Bus Performance of Parallel Programs},
	BOOKTITLE = asplos-3,
	PAGES = {257-270},
	YEAR = 1989,
	MONTH = apr}

@CONFERENCE{atum,
	AUTHOR = {Anant Agarwal and Richard L. Sites and Mark Horowitz},
	TITLE = {{ATUM}: A New Technique for Capturing
			Address Traces Using Microcode},
	BOOKTITLE = sigarch86,
	PAGES = {119-127},
	YEAR = 1986,
	MONTH = jun}

@CONFERENCE{atum:multiprocessor,
	AUTHOR = {Richard L. Sites and Anant Agarwal},
	TITLE = {Multiprocessor Cache Analysis Using {ATUM}},
	BOOKTITLE = sigarch88,
	PAGES = {186-195},
	YEAR = 1988,
	MONTH = jun}

@CONFERENCE{gupta:cache-invalidation,
	AUTHOR = {Wolf-Dietrich Weber and Anoop Gupta},
	TITLE = {Analysis of Cache Invalidation Patterns in Multiprocessors},
	BOOKTITLE = asplos-3,
	PAGES = {243-256},
	YEAR = 1989,
	MONTH = apr}

@CONFERENCE{ibm:memory-access-patterns,
	AUTHOR = {F. Darema-Rogers and G.F. Pfister and K. So},
	TITLE = {Memory Access Patterns of Parallel Scientific Programs},
	BOOKTITLE = sigmetrics87,
	PAGES = {46-58},
	YEAR = 1987,
	MONTH = may}

@TECHREPORT{illinois:mem-ref-behavior,
	AUTHOR = {David J. Lilja and David M. Marcovitz and Pen-Chung Yew},
	TITLE = {Memory Referencing Behavior and a Cache Performance Metric
		in a Shared Memory Multiprocessor},
	INSTITUTION = {University of Illinois},
	NUMBER = {CSRD Rpt. No. 838},
	YEAR = 1989,
	MONTH = jan}

Hope this helps,
John

--
John Carter (retrac@rice.edu)
Computer Systems Laboratory // Department of Computer Science
Rice University