The architecture of a Linda coprocessor
- 17 May 1988
- journal article
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News
- Vol. 16 (2) , 240-249
- https://doi.org/10.1145/633625.52428
Abstract
We describe the architecture of a coprocessor that supports the communication primitives of the Linda parallel programming environment in hardware. The coprocessor is a critical element in the architecture of the Linda Machine, an MIMD parallel processing system that is designed top down from the specifications of Linda. Communication in Linda programs takes place through a logically shared associative memory mechanism called tuple space. The Linda Machine, however, has no physically shared memory. The microprogrammable coprocessor implements distributed protocols for executing tuple space operations over the Linda Machine communication network. The coprocessor has been designed and is in the process of fabrication. We discuss the projected performance of the coprocessor and compare it with software Linda implementations. This work is supported in part by National Science Foundation grants CCR-8657615 and ONR N00014-86-K-0310.This publication has 8 references indexed in Scilit:
- Compiling Smalltalk-80 to a RISCPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,1987
- Architecture of a message-driven processorPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,1987
- Linda and FriendsComputer, 1986
- The S/Net's Linda kernelACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 1986
- Distributed data structures in LindaPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,1986
- The Manchester prototype dataflow computerCommunications of the ACM, 1985
- S/NET: A High-Speed Interconnect for Multiple ComputersIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 1983
- Design of the PSC: A Programmable Systolic ChipPublished by Springer Nature ,1983