Generalized signals: an interrupt-based communication system for hypercubes

Authors:
E. W. Felten
Affiliations:
Caltech Concurrent Computation Program, California Institute of Technology, 206-49, Pasadena, CA
Venue:
C3P Proceedings of the third conference on Hypercube concurrent computers and applications: Architecture, software, computer systems, and general issues - Volume 1
Year:
1988

Citing 1
Cited 2

Advanced UNIX programming

Advanced UNIX programming

A flexible system call interface for interprocessor communication in a distributed memory multicomputer

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review
Supporting sets of arbitrary connections on iWarp through communication context switches

SPAA '93 Proceedings of the fifth annual ACM symposium on Parallel algorithms and architectures

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper describes a communication system designed to support highly asynchronous application or system software on a distributed-memory multicomputer such as a hypercube. The system is called generalized signals because it is based on the signal facility in System V UNIX, with enhancements to allow signals to carry data.Any processor can send a signal to any other processor at any time. When a signal arrives, the receiving processor traps to a user-specified subroutine; when this subroutine is finished the interrupted code is resumed. Signal interrupts happen in a controlled manner, thereby simplifying the programmer's task. There is a facility for protection of critical sections in user programs.The generalized signals system has been implemented on the NCUBE hypercube. This implementation is based on a modified version of NCUBE's VERTEX message-passing system. Generalized signals can coexist with VERTEX messages and the enhancements to VERTEX are transparent to ordinary programs.