The architecture of a Linda coprocessor

Abstract

We describe the architecture of a coprocessor that supports the communication primitives of the Linda parallel programming environment in hardware. The coprocessor is a critical element in the architecture of the Linda Machine, an MIMD parallel processing system that is designed top down from the specifications of Linda. Communication in Linda programs takes place through a logically shared associative memory mechanism called tuple space. The Linda Machine, however, has no physically shared memory. The microprogrammable coprocessor implements distributed protocols for executing tuple space operations over the Linda Machine communication network. The coprocessor has been designed and is in the process of fabrication. We discuss the projected performance of the coprocessor and compare it with software Linda implementations. This work is supported in part by National Science Foundation grants CCR-8657615 and ONR N00014-86-K-0310.