GOTHIC memory management : a multiprocessor shared single level store
Abstract
Gothic purpose is to build an object-oriented fault-tolerant distributed operating system for a local area network of multiprocessor workstations. This paper describes Gothic memory manager. It realizes the sharing of the secondary memory space between any process running on the Gothic system. Processes on different processors can communicate by sharing permanent information. The manager implements a shared single level storage with an invalidation protocol working on disk-pages to maintain shared data consistency. The result is a secondary memory shared through a local area network of loosely coupled multiprocessor workstations. This memory manager has been implemented in the current version of the Gothic operating system prototype. It is particularly suitable for distributed applications with relatively local calculations and references, such as distributed data base systems.