The InterWeave Project: Automatic Management of Distributed Shared State

Michael L. Scott, Sandhya Dwarkadas,
and, formerly,
Chunqiang Tang,
Umit Rencuzogullari,
DeQing Chen,
Srinivasan Parthasarathy,
Eduardo Pinheiro,
and Xiangchuan Chen.

Computer Science Department
University of Rochester

As a complement to message passing, Rochester’s InterWeave system allows programmers of distributed systems to map shared segments into programs spread across heterogeneous hardware and language platforms.  InterWeave represents a merger and extension of our previous Cashmere and InterAct projects, combining hardware coherence within small multiprocessors, Cashmere-style lazy release consistency within tightly coupled clusters, and InterAct-style version-based consistency for distributed shared segments. 

In InterWeave, each shared segment evolves through a series of consistent versions.  When beginning a read-only critical section on a given segment, InterWeave uses a program-specific predicate to determine whether the currently cached version, if any, is “recent enough” to use.  Automatic data conversions allow each program to employ its own natural data format, byte order, and alignment, with full support for intra- and inter-segment pointers.  Timestamping is used to determine and communicate only those pieces of a segment that are different from the cached copy. 

InterWeave currently runs on Alpha, Sparc, x86, MIPS, and Power series processors, under Tru64, Solaris, Linux, Irix, AIX, and Windows NT (XP).  Currently supported languages are C, C++, Java, Fortran 77, and Fortran 90.  Driving applications include data mining, intelligent distributed environments, multi-player games, and scientific visualization. 

Supported by NSF grants CCR-9705594, 6-1-1997 to 5-31-2001, and CCR-9988361, 6-1-2000 to 5-31-2003.  Additional support from NSF RI grant EIA-0080124, a cooperative Agreement between the Department of Energy Office of Inertial Confinement Fusion and the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics, and equipment grants from IBM, Compaq, Intel, and Sun. 

InterWeave Publications and Presentations


Last Change: 20 February 2006 / Michael Scott's email address