Low-synchronization translation lookaside buffer consistency in large-scale shared-memory multiprocessors

Abstract

Operating systems for most current shared-memory multiprocessors must maintain translation lookaside buffer (TLB) consistency across processors. A processor that changes a shared page table must flush outdated mapping information from its own TLB, and it must force the other processors using the page table to do so as well. Published algorithms for maintaining TLB consistency on some popular commercial multi-processors incur excessively high synchronization costs. We present an efficient TLB consistency algorithm that can be implemented on multiprocessors that include a small set of reasonable architectural features. This algorithm has been incorporated in a version of the MACH operating system developed for the IBM Research Parallel Processor Prototype (RP3).