Paper Details

@InProceedings{ChalmersPaddon89,
  title = "{A} {S}ystem {C}onfiguration for very large {D}atabase {P}roblems [{E}xtended {A}bstract]",
  author= "Chalmers, Alan G. and Paddon, Derek J.",
  editor= "Wexler, J.",
  pages = "109--112",
  booktitle= "{OUG}-11: {D}eveloping {T}ransputer {A}pplications",
  isbn= "90 5199 020 0",
  year= "1989",
  month= "sep",
  abstract= "In the past many applications have ensured success by
     restricting the size of the application, or by increasing
     the number of processors and memory size to enable the full
     database to be supported. Here, we specify that databases of
     arbitrary sizes should be supported and not be restricted by
     the memory size of individual processors.The ability to cope
     with very large databases was easily achieved in many of the
     early MIMD systems by using a shared memory model. However,
     the transputer and Occam process model restricts us from
     using this approach, instead we may share data [7].Unlike
     shared memory systems, we cannot globally address data in a
     message passing system. However, if data items carry unique
     identifiers, we can share single or multiple copies of those
     data items across many processors. Indeed, adopting this
     system of shared data reference allows us the same memory
     flexibility for read-only data, as would be obtained in a
     shared memory system, without the bus contention problems
     associated with that class of processor. In its degenerate
     form, a shared data system has only private data, which is
     never available at any other processor. The simple processor
     farm of May and Shepherd [8] is a typical example, where
     data and tasks are assigned to specific processors without
     the need for data to migrate to other processors. In many
     applications, such as the ray tracing of very complex
     computer images, a static allocation of data is
     inappropriate. Here, a database is managed at each node in a
     similare manner to a cache memory. Shared data systems for a
     tree based system architecture, and for very large data base
     problems are described by Green, Paddon and Lewis [7], and
     Green and Paddon [3, 4, 5, 6], where these systems were
     applied to image synthesis using the ray tracing method."
}

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