Reconfigurable interconnection networks in Distributed Shared Memory systems: a study on communication patterns

The static interconnection network topologies in the distributed shared memory systems (DSM) have several limitations. The reconfigurable interconnection networks may reduce the network congestion, network latency and improve the overall performance. However it is necessary to know when the right moment to perform the reconfiguration is and how to implement it. In this paper, we present our study on communication patterns of parallel scientific and commercial benchmark applications on a simulated but realistic DSM machine and their relation to context switching in the operating system. We also propose a reconfiguration scheme that is triggered by the context switches.