Other research projects have explored the use of a single address space as a shared name space. Most of these systems are intended to execute on a single machine. We believe an efficient implementation of a single address space across multiple machines is possible by combining a high performance DSM system and a fast RPC mechanism to provide both data movement and function shipping. Psyche is perhaps the most similar to our proposed system. However , differences exist in the cross domain communication mechanism.
Psyche uses page faults to trigger cross domain calls rather than explicit traps by stubs.
M.L. Scott, T.J. LeBlanc, and B.D. Marsh. Design rational for Psyche, a general-purpose multiprocessor operating system . In both of these systems a thread can migrate across nodes in a distributed environment, and indeed Alpha s term for a migrating thread is a distributed thread. Michael L. Scott, Thomas J. LeBlanc, and Brian D. Marsh. Design rationale for Psyche, a generalpurpose multiprocessor operating system .