Multiprocessor Smalltalk: a case study of a multiprocessor-based programming environment
Authors: 
J. Pallas, D. UngarAuthors Info & Claims
J. Pallas, D. UngarAuthors Info & ClaimsPages 268 - 277
Abstract
We have adapted an interactive programming system (Smalltalk) to a multiprocessor (the Firefly). The task was not as difficult as might be expected, thanks to the application of three basic strategies: serialization, replication, and reorganization. Serialization of access to resources disallows concurrent access. Replication provides multiple instances of resources when they cannot or should not be serialized. Reorganization allows us to restructure part of the system when the other two strategies cannot be applied.
We serialized I/O, memory allocation, garbage collection, and scheduling, we replicated the interpreter process, software caches, and a free-list, and we reorganized portions of the scheduling system to deal with some deep-seated assumptions. Our changes yielded a fairly low static overhead. We attribute our success to the choice of a small, flexible operating system, a set of constraints which simplified the problem, and the versality of the three strategies for dealing with concurrency. The current system has a moderate amount of overhead when parallelism is being used—25% to 65%. It is acceptable, but we believe it can be improved.
References
[1]
Khayri Abdel-Hamid Mohamed All. Objecl- Oriented Storage Managemeat and Garbage Collection in Distributed Processing Systems. PhD thesis, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, December 1984. Published as TRITA- CS-8406.
[2]
Brian M. Barry, John R. Altoft, D. A. Thomas, and Mike Wilson. Using objects to design and build RADAR ESM systems. In O OPSLA '87 Conference Proceedings, pages 192-201, Association for Computing Machinery, October 1987.
[3]
John Bennett. Distributed raalltalk: Inheritance and Reactiveness in Distributed Systems. PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1987. In preparation.
[4]
John K. Bennett. The design and implementation of Distributed Smalltalk. in OOPSLA '87 Conference Proceedings, pages 318-330, Association for Computing Machinery October 1987.
[5]
David R. Cheriton. The V kernel: a software base for distributed systems. IEEE Software, 1(2), April 1984.
[6]
David R. Cheriton, Gert A. Slavenburg, and Patrick D. Boyle. Software-controlled caches in the VMP multiprocessor. In Proceedings of the 13tk Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture, pages 366-374, June 1986.
[7]
E. W. Dijkstra, Leslie Lamport, A. J. Martin, C. S. Scholten, and E. F. M. Steffens. On-thefiy garbage collection: an exercise in cooperation. Communications of the A CM, 21(11):966- 975, 1978.
[8]
Adele Goldberg and David Robson. Smalltalk- 80: The Language and its Implementation. Addison-Wesley, 1983.
[9]
Carl Hewitt. The Apiary network architecture for knowledgeable systems. In Conference Record of the 1980 LISP Conference, pages 107- 117, August 1980.
[10]
Carl ttewitt and Henry Lieberman. A real-time garbage collector based on the lifetimes of objects. Communications of the A CM, 26(6):419- 429, June 1983.
[11]
Hill, et al. SPUR: A VLS} Multiprvcessor Workstation. Technical Report UCB/CSD 86/273 University of California, Berkeley, 1985.
[12]
H. T. Kung and S. W. Song. An Efficient Parallel Garbage Collection System and its Correctness Proof. Technical Report, Carnegie-Mellon University, september 1977.
[13]
Leslie Lamport. Garbage collection with multiple processes' an exercise in parallelism. In Philip H. Enslow Jr., editor, Proceedings of the 1976 INternational Conference on Parallel Processing, pages 50-54, Computer Society Press of the IEEE, August 1976.
[14]
Kim McCall. The Smalltalk-80 benchmarks. In Glenn Krasner, editor, Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice, chapter 9, pages 153-173, Addison-Wesley, 1983.
[15]
Guy L. Steele J. Multiprocessing compact~fyinn garbage collection. Communications of the ACM, 18(9):495-508, September 1975.
[16]
Daniel C. Swinehart, Polle T. Zellweger, Richard J. Beach, and Robert B. Hagmann. A structural view of the Cedar programming environment. A CM Transactions on Progmmmin# Languages and Systems, 8(4):419-490, October 1986.
[17]
Charles P. Thacker and Lawrence C. Stewart. Firefly: a multiprocessor workstation. In Proceedings of the Second interuaiional Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Lagguages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS II), pages 164-172, Computer Society Press of the IEEE, October 1987.
[18]
David A. Thomas, Wilf R. LaLonde, and John R. Pugh. A ctraA Multitasking/Multiprocessing Smalltglk. Technical Report SCS-TR-92: Carleton University, May 1986.
[19]
David Ungar. Generation scavenging: a nondisruptive high performance storage reclamation algorithm. In Software Engineering Symposium on Practical Software Development Envito,merits, pages 157-167, Pittsburgh, PA, April 1984.
[20]
David M. Ungar and David A. Patterson. Berkeley Smalltalk: Who knows where the time goes? In Glenn Krasner, editor, Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice, chapter 11, pages 189- 206, Addison-Wesley, 1983.
[21]
Stephen C. Vestal. Garbage Collection: An Exercise in Distributed Fault-Tolerant Programming. PhD thesis, University of Washington, January 1987. Published as Technical Report 87-01-03.
[22]
Zorn, et al. SPUR Lisp: Design and Implementation. Technical Report UCB/CSD 87/373, University of California, Berkeley 1987.
Index Terms
- Multiprocessor Smalltalk: a case study of a multiprocessor-based programming environment
Recommendations
Multiprocessor Smalltalk: a case study of a multiprocessor-based programming environment
PLDI '88: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1988 conference on Programming language design and implementationWe have adapted an interactive programming system (Smalltalk) to a multiprocessor (the Firefly). The task was not as difficult as might be expected, thanks to the application of three basic strategies: serialization, replication, and reorganization. ...
Balanced Prefetching Aggressiveness Controller for NoC-based Multiprocessor
SBCCI '14: Proceedings of the 27th Symposium on Integrated Circuits and Systems DesignThe performance gap between memory hierarchy and processor is a well-known issue and the prefetching approach is often used to minimize this problem. This technique performs a data prefetch in memory and makes it available in the private cache before ...
Comments
Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
Copyright © 1988 ACM.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 01 June 1988
Published in SIGPLAN Volume 23, Issue 7
Check for updates
Qualifiers
- Article
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- View Citations11Total Citations
- 651Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)133
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)30
Reflects downloads up to 06 Feb 2025
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in