Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!SPEECH2.CS.CMU.EDU!Alessandro.Forin
From: Alessandro.Forin@SPEECH2.CS.CMU.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Off loading the protocol
Message-ID: <575484548.af@SPEECH2.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: 27 Mar 88 16:49:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 28


> Date: 19 Mar 88 18:18:09 GMT
> From: csl!hercules!auerbach@spam.istc.sri.com  (Karl Auerbach)
> Subject: Re: Off loading the protocol
> Sender: tcp-ip-request@sri-nic.arpa
> To: tcp-ip@sri-nic.arpa
>
> Just curious: How does the shared memory paradigm handle the case where
> the machines are of different memory architectures with different
> data representations?

As far as I know, my system (Agora) is the only one that specifically
addresses your question.  A description of our work will appear in the
August issue of IEEE Trans. Computer, and you can find also a paper now
in the proceedings of the ASPLOS-II conference (it is in the list I
posted earlier to the tcp-ip list).

The answer is basically to keep around at runtime data type
descriptors, so that you can translate a datum coming from an
incompatible machine into the appropriate local representation.  

This is much the same problem you have with the description of data
inside messages for any remote procedure call package (Sun, Apollo,
Xerox, Mach-MiG, etc..).  It is in no way specific to the shared memory
paradigm.

Sorry for the delay in answering...
sandro-