Distributed compilation using distributed shared memor

This thesis describes an experimental investigation of the suitability of Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) to distributed compilation. A prototype Modula-2+ compiler was constructed in a distributed environment using DSM to support concurrency. The data structures and access patterns of the compiler are substantially different from those of numeric applications, making DSM paging activity the most dominant performance factor. The compiler access patterns were investigated and several techniques for improving the paging behaviour were developed.;In spite of the success of specific page fault reduction methods, the compiler constructed for this thesis does not show any speed up relative to the sequential compiler except for some unusually large programs. The main reasons are excessive amount of memory allocated by the compiler, high amount of false sharing between machines over small memory objects and high overhead in supporting the shared memory paradigm over a Local Area Network.;The performance of the distributed Modula-2+ compiler using DSM is similar to that of the same compiler using RPC. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).