In: Beilner, H.; Bause, F.: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 977: Quantitative Evaluation of Computing and Communication Systems, pages 385-400. Springer-Verlag, September 1995.
Abstract: This paper presents a modeling approach based on deterministic and stochastic Petri nets (DSPN's) for analyzing memory consistency protocols for multiprocessors with Distributed Shared Memory (DSM). DSPN's are a numerically solvable modeling formalism with a graphical representation. The modeling approach addresses in particular the performance degradation due to the amount of message exchange, which is an important issue in software implementations of DSM with shared pages. DSPN's are employed for a comparative performance study of an adaptive memory consistency protocol, an eager-invalidate, and a delayed-invalidate release consistency protocol in a software implementation of DSM.