Communication styles for parallel systems

Distributed-memory parallel systems rely on explicit message exchange for communication, but the communication operations they support can differ in many aspects. One key difference is the way messages are generated or consumed. With systolic communication, a message is transmitted as it is generated. For example, the result computed by the multiplier is sent directly to the communication subsystem for transmission to another node. With memory communication, the complete message is generated and stored in memory, and then transmitted to its destination. Since sender and receiver nodes are individually controlled, they can use different communication styles. One example of memory communication is message passing: both the sender and receiver buffer the message in memory. These two communication styles place different demands on processor design. This article illustrates each style's effect on processor resources for some key application kernels. We are targeting the iWarp system because it supports both communication styles. Two parallel-program generators, one for each communication style, automatically map the sample programs.