Abstract - This paper introduces an efficient barrier synchronization algorithm based on the binomial spanning tree (BST) and proposes a data transfer reduction technique for distributed shared memory systems under release consistency. The introduced BST-based barrier algorithm parallelizes and distributes the workload amongs participating processors, alleviating network contention and yielding less retransmission. As a result, performance improves, and the degree of improvement increases quickly as the number of participants grows. Our barrier algorithm and data transfer reduction technique are incorporated in TreadMarks for evaluation using various benchmarks on a network of workstations and the IBM SP machine. Experimental results are gathered and demonstrated.