Abstract: A method for a user process to specify a policy for allocating pages of physical memory on the nodes of a multinode multiprocessor computer system. Through means such as a system call, an application program can specify to the operating system that physical pages of memory for an application-specified portion of virtual address space are to be physically allocated upon a specified set of nodes, subject to the additional selection criteria that the pages are to be allocated at first reference upon: 1) the node upon which the reference first occurs; 2) the node which has the most free memory, or 3) that the pages should be evenly distributed across the indicated set of nodes. In effect, the operating system remembers the specified allocation policy and node set from which the physical pages can be subsequently allocated, as established by a system call. Subsequent use of the virtual address space for which the allocation policy is defined results in the memory being allocated accordingly.

Abstract: Physical memory is accessed by associating identified memory with a window of virtual address space whose size and location are specified by an application program. In the typical application of the invention, the virtual window is smaller in size than the associated memory. One or more virtually-windowed address translations are then established between portions of the windowed address space and the corresponding portions of the physical memory. Additional physical memory can be accessed with the same virtual address space by establishing new virtually-windowed address translations with other portions of the physical memory. In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the physical memory is identified, attached to the virtual window, and the address translation is established by the computer's operating system in response to a series of system calls from an application program.

Abstract: For a multiprocessor computer having shared memory distributed across multiple nodes, a method and system for dynamically replicating data such as program text stored in memory on a first node to memory on a second node for use by a process executing on the second node. In response to a page fault generated by the process in accessing data, a determination is made whether the data is present in the memory of another node. If so, memory is allocated on the process's node for the data, and the needed data is copied from the other node to the process's node. The process's page table entry for the missing data is then modified to contain the physical address of the allocated memory, where the data is now stored. The method is implemented in a preferred embodiment by using novel data structures linked to the data structures that are typically created when a file is mapped to a process's virtual address space.