Paper Details

%T A System Configuration for very large Database Problems [Extended Abstract]
%A Alan G. Chalmers, Derek J. Paddon
%E J. Wexler
%B OUG\-11: Developing Transputer Applications
%X 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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