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ed by a central cross-point switch. Before detailed design began, this structure was extensively studied by simulation and analytic models [Bhandarkar, 1972; Strecker, 1971], and it was deter mined that a 16 ´ 16 cross-point switch could be optimal, given the available technology. The TTL and Schottky TTL logic families were used for the switch and the relocation hardware because only they offered a fair range of MSI components. MSI components in the faster ECL logic were not available at the time. Essentially all of C.mmp is built with 1971—1972 technology, although some of the more recent additions use MOS LSI.

The Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 was chosen for the processors (Pc's) primarily because of its Unibus architecture. The Unibus allowed easy interfacing to the shared memory and kept the Pc modifications minimal. A further advantage of the Unibus was that it allowed DMA transfers to use relative, rather than physical, addresses because all addresses on the Unibus can be mapped in a uniform way by the relocation scheme, which will be described in detail. Therefore, the peripheral devices would need no modification to access the 25-bit shared memory address, even though they generate only the standard 18-bit Unibus address.

The following descriptions are primarily architectural, although some internal algorithms are described. For implementation detail, consult Fuller and Harbison [1978].

Figure 2 shows the PMS structure as of early 1979.¹ There are 16 processor ports and 16 memory ports in the cross-point switch (Smultiport, or Smp). The Pc's are slightly modified PDP-11/20 and PDP-11/40 processors, each connected to all the memories by Smp via the relocation unit (Dmap). The Pc's are further interconnected by an interprocessor bus (IP-bus), which provides basic control functions such as start, halt, and three levels of interprocessor interrupt (IPI), as well as the broadcasting of a 60-bit nonrepeating clock value used for interval timing and unique name generation. Note that this clock does not synchronize the internal operation of the processors.

C. mmp was constructed in several major stages: four prototype switches (1 ´ 1, 1 ´ 2, 2 ´ 2, 4 ´ 4), the full 16 ´ 16 switch with five 11/20's as processors, and finally the 16 ´ 16 Smp with a full processor complement of sixteen Pc's: five 11/20's and eleven 11/40's. The 16 memory ports were initially configured with the 1.4 Mbyte of core memory, and a similar amount of MOS memory was added later.

In early 1977 the Pc modifications for the 11/40 were completed, and by June 1977, C. mmp itself was completed by adding eleven 11/40's to the existing five 11/20's, Any mix of these two Pc models is possible. The desire to exploit a writable control store included in the 11/40 modifications, and performance measurements indicating that symmetry in processor speed is desirable,² led to exclusion of the 11/20's in early 1978, leaving the eleven 11/40's as the total Pc complement.

In the original PMS design [Wulf and Bell, 1972], a second cross-point switch was included to connect peripheral devices to any Pc's Unibus. For reasons of economy, this switch was never built and peripherals were assigned to specific Unibuses. I/O requests are mapped from requesting processors to the processor controlling the device via an IPI and a simple per-Pc queuing system in the operating-system kernel. The lack of the second cross-point switch has not been detrimental to the system.

Access to shared primary memory (Mp) is performed in two stages: relocation of the 18-bit processor-generated address into a 25-bit address space, and resolution of contention in accessing that memory location. These jobs are performed by the relocation unit Dmap and the cross-point switch Smp, respectively.

1.2.1 The Relocation Mechanism: Dmap Dmap resides on the Unibus of each Pc and generally appears as a peripheral device, intercepting and mapping most addresses as they are placed on the Unibus. The planned, but not implemented, 2 Kbyte processor cache memory (Mcache) would interface to the Pc through Dmap.

Dmap divides the 32-Mbyte address space into thirty-two 8-Kbyte directly addressable pages that may be physically placed anywhere in shared memory. There are four address spaces, specified by 2 bits in the processor status word (PS). Therefore, four sets of eight address-mapping registers are provided in each relocation unit. To allow communication between address spaces without explicit addressing changes, the stack page is common to all four spaces.

The four address spaces are the heart of the memory protection mechanism: in only one space (1,1 in the PS space bits) are the relocation registers and the PS directly addressable. Since this page is used exclusively by the Hydra kernel [Wulf, Cohen, Corwin, Jones, Levin, Pierson, and Pollack, 1974], protecting the PS from indirect changes (see Sec. 1.5 of this chapter) guarantees