Programming with distributed shared memory

In a distributed system, remote services may be provided either by a remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism or by paging in the required memory segments and performing the services locally. The latter approach, termed distributed shared memory (DSM) has several benefits given the current trend of structuring computing systems using diskless computational servers (workstations) and data servers (file servers). A set of distributed shared memory mechanisms that handle networkwide memory management for an object-based system is proposed. The implementation of these mechanisms is discussed and examples of their use in implementing the programming language Linda, process migration, two-phase commit and a distributed game are provided.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>