Patent ID: 8732412

Claim:
A method for pruning obsolete messages in a distributed shared memory (DSM) using a processor device, comprising: upon receiving a request sent from a remote DSM agent and after waiting to clear blocking conditions of an ongoing messaging session and mutual exclusion: determining that the request is an obsolete message when a local DSM agent receives the request and determines that a remote-message-ID conveyed in the request is of an order less than a remote-message-ID maintained by the local DSM agent for the requested data segment, wherein the obsolete message sent from the remote DSM agent is not processed, and maintaining by each of a plurality of DSM agents, as local parameters, a local-message-ID to which a local DSM agent assigns a local unique ID upon issuing the request, and a remote-message-ID to which the local DSM agent assigns the local unique ID received in an alternative request from a remote DSM agent.