CapNet - An approach to ultra-high speed network

In the Shared Memory paradigm, a distributed system is viewed as a number of processors connected by a high-bandwidth bus sharing a virtual memory. MemNet was the first-generation effort to prove the paradigm in a local area environment. Its success encouraged the examination of the paradigm in the wide area context, leading to the second-generation effort, CapNet. Without the support of some features inherent in local area networks, CapNet is faced with a new set of problems. The issues involved, namely address space structure, page location, and caching algorithms, are discussed. A new approach that combines the address translation and routing is suggested as an optimized page location solution. A number of caching schemes are investigated, and a straw-man design for a large-scale implementation is proposed.