Abstract: A software package is introduced to aid in the teaching of courses in parallel processing, particularly topics such as software distributed shared memory, memory consistency models, and synchronization mechanisms. The use of Linda and tuple space for the underlying infrastructure leads to a simple and elegant structure which enables the student to quickly reach the core concepts without having to deal with a large amount of technical detail.
Table of Contents:
First obtain the source and test files:
Next, download and install the POSYBL implementation of the Linda environment.
Finally, one must produce the binary files DSMCalls.o and DSMFrontEnd. A sample Makefile is:
POSYBL_LIB = /users/m/matloff/Pub/POSYBL/lib
all: DSMFrontEnd DSMCalls.o
DSMCalls.o: DSMCalls.c
gcc -g -c DSMCalls.c
DSMFrontEnd: DSMFrontEnd.c
gcc -g -o DSMFrontEnd DSMFrontEnd.c -L$(POSYBL_LIB) -lposybl
Of course, you can change DSMCalls.o to a library archive if you wish (possibly storing it in POSYBL_LIB for convenience).
Formal documentation is still in preparation. However, the comments in DSMCalls.c explain the APIs for each TupleDSM library function, and the example Prime.c should make usage clear. Hopefully the formal documentation will be available by the third week of December.
Other software Web sites by Norm Matloff: