Middleware for Many-Cores—Why It Is Needed and What Functionality It Should Provide

Today's multi-cores and future many-cores are NUMA architectures with complex cache hierarchies and multiple memory channels. Depending on the topologies of these memory networks we find everything from true data sharing with shared caches to distributed memory architectures which just pretend to be physical shared memory systems. In fact, most many-cores are hybrid systems that exhibit the characteristics of both distributed systems and SMPs. In this paper we argue in favor of middleware platforms for many-cores. We will discuss the needed functionality in contrast to common distributed system middleware and present micro benchmarks on several architectures to substantiate our claims.