Design and Implementation of Virtual Memory-Mapped Communication on Myrinet

Abstract:

This paper describes the design and implementation of the virtual
memory-mapped communication model (VMMC) on a Myrinet network of
PCI-based PCs. VMMC has been designed designed and implemented for the
SHRIMP multicomputer where it delivers user-to-user latency and
bandwidth close to the limits imposed by the underlying hardware. The
goal of this work is to provide an implementation of VMMC on a
commercially available hardware platform; to determine whether the
benefits of VMMC can be realized on the new hardware; and to
investigate network interface design tradeoffs by comparing SHRIMP
with Myrinet and its respective VMMC implementation.

Our Myrinet implementation of VMMC achieves 9.8 microseconds one-way
latency and provides 108.4 MBytes per second user-to-user
bandwidth. Compared to SHRIMP, the Myrinet implementation of VMMC
incurs relatively higher overhead and demands more network interface
resources (LANai processor, on-board SRAM) but requires less
operating system support.

This technical report has been published as

Design and Implementation of Virtual Memory-Mapped Communication
on Myrinet. Cezary Dubnicki, Angelos Bilas, Kai Li
and James Philbin, in
Proceedings of 11th Internat. Parallel Processing Symposium,
April 1997.