An asymmetric distributed shared memory model for heterogeneous parallel systems

Heterogeneous computing combines general purpose CPUs with accelerators to efficiently execute both sequential control-intensive and data-parallel phases of applications. Existing programming models for heterogeneous computing rely on programmers to explicitly manage data transfers between the CPU system memory and accelerator memory. This paper presents a new programming model for heterogeneous computing, called Asymmetric Distributed Shared Memory (ADSM), that maintains a shared logical memory space for CPUs to access objects in the accelerator physical memory but not vice versa. The asymmetry allows light-weight implementations that avoid common pitfalls of symmetrical distributed shared memory systems. ADSM allows programmers to assign data objects to performance critical methods. When a method is selected for accelerator execution, its associated data objects are allocated within the shared logical memory space, which is hosted in the accelerator physical memory and transparentl...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ASPLOS
• Authors: Isaac Gelado, Javier Cabezas, Nacho Navarro, John E. Stone, Sanjay J. Patel, Wen-mei W. Hwu
• Keywords: ASPLOS 2010, Distributed Shared Memory, Heterogeneous Computing, Shared Logical Memory