9fans archive / 1994 / 03 / 20 /    prev next

From: Vijay Gill vijay@gl....
Subject: SSS (via plan 9)
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 02:18:16 -0500

> HI,
> 	Reading through backissues of the Plan9 list I caught a reference
> to SSS (Single Site Semantics), could you give me a couple of references
> to this...


More information on SSS can be found on ftp.chorus.fr, look among their 
index for references to implementing Chorus on the ipsc/386 and the 
T9000, and on loosely coupled multiprocessors.  The papers are:

UNIX on a Loosely Coupled Architecture: The Chorus/MiX Approach
	(CS/TR-91-49)
Chorus/MiX, A Distributed UNIX, on Multicomputers
	(CS/TR-92-10)

Andy "what have we learnt" Tanenbaum has also done work in this area 
with the Amoeba Operating system (I don't have the papers handy, but here 
is a reference)
	Tannenbaum - Andrew Tanenbaum, Rob van Renese, and Hans van 
Staveren. {\it A Retrospective and Evaluation of the Amoeba Distributed 
Operating System}, Techical Report, Vrije University, Amsterdam, October, 
1989, pp. 27.

Another good paper is:
	Hildebrand - Dan Hildebrand. {\it An Architectural Overview of 
QNX.} The proceedings of the Usenix Workshop on Micro--Kernels \& Other 
Kernel Architectures, Seattle, April, 1992.

This, and some amoeba papers, are also available for anon ftp on 
ftp.cse.ucsc.edu under pub/qnx and pub/amoeba.

More info can by found by doing an archie search on amoeba.
Basically all it boils down to is (a gross oversimplification) making 
loosely coupled non shared memory processors (possibly several single 
board computers in a VME chassis) feel like a single computer.  This does 
seem to be a good way to go, shared memory multiprocessors tend to run 
out of memory to processor bandwidth.  I am not sure if Plan 9 can do 
SSS, perhaps someone can correct me if I am wrong.



> Human:	Stephen F. Simon		Email:	S.Simon@uns...
> Tel:	697 5744 (Provisional)		Fax:	663 1222
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Vijay Gill                         |The (paying) customer is always right.
wrath@cs....                  |                  - Piercarlo Grandi
vijay@gl....                  | Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get
These are my opinions only.        | sucked into jet engines.