The Virtual Interface Architecture
Providing guidance for both developers and users of large clustered systems, this book explains how VI provides a new interface between applications and switched interconnect hardware.
TABLE OF CONTENTS The Virtual Interface Architecture
Chapter 2: Historical Background and Architectural Roots
The development of VIA was heavily influenced by key technology developments in academia and industry. This chapter provides historical background, and puts VIA into context with its related and predecessor technologies. By tracing some key research and technology developments, this chapter will illustrate the timeliness and need for a VIA solution.
Two Parallel Architectures
There are multiple approaches for scaling the processing power of computer systems. Increasing the performance of a single CPU is done by increasing its clock speed and by improving its internal architecture to more efficiently process instructions and access data. But performance requirements that exceed the capabilities of a single CPU are solved using parallel processing. Parallel processing allows more than one CPU to work simultaneously on a problem or set of problems.
There are two mainstream computer architectures that support parallel-processing, shared memory and distributed memory. Generally speaking, the computing model for shared memory is multiprocessing, and for distributed memory, message-passing. Both architectures are commonly used, and each plays an important role in creating scalable, distributed systems and clusters.
This chapter will briefly discuss the multiprocessing and message passing programming models and review their associated strengths and weaknesses. This chapter will then review some of the predecessors of VIA that had major influence on its design.
Shared Memory and Multiprocessing
The basic concept of shared memory systems is simple; multiple processors share the same physical memory.
The multiprocessing programming model is arguably very simple and straightforward. When two programs want to exchange information,...
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